Range: Marquesas, Tahiti.

Description: Moderately large to large, solid to moderately heavy. Last whorl ventricosely conical to conical; outline convex at adapical fourth to third, straight below, occasionally slightly concave centrally. Siphonal fasciole indistinct to prominent. Shoulder sharply carinate. Spire usually low, outline straight but early postnuclear whorls often slightly domed. Larval shell projecting, maximum diameter 0.7-0.8 mm. First 4-7 postnuclear whorls tuberculate, late whorls carinate. Teleoconch sutural ramps almost flat, grading to deeply concave in later whorls, with 2 increasing to 6- 10 distinct spiral grooves; prominent subsutural ridge as strong as shoulder carina. Last whorl with variably spaced, rather fine spiral ribs on basal third.

Ground colour white. Last whorl with pinlush or brownish violet spiral bands and axial clouds, leaving 1-3 interrupted to solid white bands, just below centre, and sometimes within adapical third, and at base. Sparse spirally arranged black spots, flecks, and blotches may occur, sometimes also forming rows of alternating black and white dots and dashes (Pl. 44, Fig. 16). Siphonal fasciole white to violet. Larval whorls and a few adjacent postnuclear sutural ramps immaculate white. Following ramps mainly suffused with pinkish to bluish violet adaxially, margins white; brown to black radial blotches either extending across ramps or reduced to spots and flecks at both margins. Aperture white to bluish white.

Periostracum brown, rather thick.

Habitat and Habits: In 20-50 m on coral reefs.

Discussion: C. gauguini can be confused with C. barthelemyi from the western and central Indian Ocean; the two are separated more by distance than by morphology. The latter species has weaker spiral sculpture on its late sutural ramps, and its shoulder is not sharply carinate. In C. gauguini, the surface of the last whorl is often smoother adapically (distinct spiral striae are absent) and has fine spiral ribs instead of ribs and ribbons at base. The last whorl pattern of C. barthelemyi is orangish to reddish brown rather than violet, and its sutural ramps have radial blotches rather than marginal markings. Because of their widely separated geographic ranges, we tentatively distinguish C. gauguini and C. barthelemyi as species rather than at the subspecies level.

C. gauguini 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.