Range: Japan to Philippines, New Caledonia.

Description: Small, light to moderately light. Last whorl usually conical; outline almost straight, slightly convex below shoulder. Shoulder and late postnuclear whorls with sharp, upward- pointing, hollow marginal spines, extending slightly below shoulder as costae. Spire of moderate height to high; outline straight to slightly concave. Larval shell of about 3 whorls, maximum diameter 0.8-0.9 mm. Early postnuclear whorls tuberculate. Teleoconch sutural ramps concave, with 1 increasing to 3-6 spiral grooves; spiral sculpture sometimes obsolete. Last whorl with spiral ribs separated by wider grooves, from base to shoulder; sometimes with collabral costae extending entire length of last whorl, especially toward outer lip.

Ground colour white to grey or beige. Last whorl with broad brownish grey and brown spiral bands leaving a broad, lighter central band. Overlying spiral rows of alternating brown and white dots and dashes on ribs from base to shoulder. Larval whorls white. Teleoconch sutural ramps with fine radial brown lines or blotches extending across outer margins. Aperture white.

Periostracum yellow, thin.

Radular tooth "about 200 µm in length, lanceolate, with triangular knob-like base, corpulent middle part and tapering tip with minute barb and sharp blade but no serration" (Azuma, 1972).

Habitat and Habits: In 200-400 m, on dead coral and rubble.

Discussion: C. chiangi is set apart within Conus by its unique sharp hollow marginal spines that continue as costae to the subshoulder area. Only C. polongimarumai shows certain similarities. For comparison, see the Discussion of that species. Coomans et al. (1983) determined priority of the name chiangi over lamellatus.

C. chiangi 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.