Range: S. Australia, New South Wales to Perth; Tasmania.

Description: Very small and light. Last whorl conical or ventricosely conical to broadly conical or broadly and ventricosely conical; outline convex to straight, straighter toward base; left side usually concave near base. Shoulder subangulate to broadly carinate, weakly tuberculate to undulate. Spire of low to moderate height, outline concave to straight. Larval shell of 1.25-1.5 whorls, maximum diameter 0.7-0.9 mm. Postnuclear spire whorls distinctly tuberculate to undulate. Teleoconch sutural ramps concave, rarely with obsolete spiral striae. Last whorl with weak spiral ribs or narrow ribbons near base, seldom to centre.

Colour from white or grey through yellow, pink or orange to violet and brown. Last whorl usually with spiral rows of often alternating white and dark dots or dashes as well as with dark and white wavy to zigzag-shaped axial lines and streaks. In dark shells, last whorl may be encircled with a light band below centre; in light shells, with 2-4 interrupted to solid dark bands. Specimens with almost uniformly coloured last whorls intergrade with specimens with strongly speckled last whorls. Larval whorls white to dark brown. Postnuclear sutural ramps white to grey or matching last whorl in colour, immaculate or with brown radial markings. Aperture matching the exterior surface in colour.

Periostracum yellowish brown, thin, translucent, smooth.

Habitat and Habits: Intertidal and uppermost subtidal; on coral reef, in sand and short weed (Turnbull, pers. comm., 1987).

Discussion: C. rutilus cannot be confused with any other Conus species.

C. rutilus range map

This section contains verbatim reproductions of the accounts of 316 species of Conus from the Indo-Pacific region, from Manual of the Living Conidae, by Röckel, Korn and Kohn (1995). They are reproduced with the kind permission of the present publisher, Conchbooks.

All plates and figures referred to in the text are also in Röckel, Korn & Kohn, 1995. Manual of the Living Conidae Vol. 1: Indo-Pacific Region.

The range maps have been modified so that each species account has it own map, rather than one map that showed the ranges of several species in the original work. This was necessary because each species account is on a separate page on the website and not confined to the order of accounts in the book.