Range: Philippines (Zapatos Id., Marinduque, Burias Strait).

Description: Medium-sized, moderately solid. Last whorl ventricosely conical to conoid-cylindrical, outline convex; left side constricted just above base. Aperture wider at base than near shoulder. Shoulder angulate to sharply angulate. Spire of low to moderate height, outline concave. Larval shell of 2-2.5 whorls, maximum diameter 0.8-0.9 mm. Teleoconch sutural ramps flat, with 1 increasing to 3-7 pronounced spiral grooves. Last whorl with widely spaced axially striate spiral grooves from base to centre or shoulder; intervening ribbons broadest centrally, divided into pairs or triplets of narrow ribbons at base.

Ground colour cream. Last whorl with 3 groups of 2-5 rows of dark brown to violet-brown spots or bars on spiral ribbons, within basal third, just above centre and at subshoulder area. Spirally arrayed or irregularly scattered fine brown dots and axial dashes occur on entire last whorl but vary in number and arrangement. Larval whorls and early postnuclear sutural ramps light brown to almost white. Late sutural ramps with dark brown radial streaks and blotches. Aperture white or light yellow, with a darker collabral band.

Habitat and Habits: Reported from 75-120 m.

Discussion: C. zapatosensis resembles C. stramineus mulderi in size, shape and colour pattern. However, shells of the latter have less angulate shoulders, the spiral sculpture of the last whorls is restricted to the basal parts, the ground colour is bluish grey, and the aperture is violet to orangebrown. C. subulatus differs from C. zapatosensis in having a narrower and usually more conical last whorl (RD 0.51- 0.54). Its aperture is violet and lacks the dark collabral band. C. zapatosensis is most similar to the dark-coloured shells from Philippines provisionally assigned to C. blanfordianus. The latter tend to have slightly broader last whorls (RD 0.56-0.61); their ground colour is white rather than cream, their spiral rows of spots and bars are more uniformly distributed adapically, and the fine brown dots and axial dashes on their last whorls are more sparse. With regard to these rather slight differences, we cannot unequivocally exclude conspecificity.

C. zapatosensis 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.