Range: Pacific: Japan to Taiwan and Queensland to New Caledonia, N. New Zealand and Kermadec Is; reported from Philippines; Indian Ocean: Natal to Gulf of Aden and Oman, and W. Australia.

Description: Moderately small to moderately large, moderately solid to solid; heavier variants known from W. Australia and Somalia. Last whorl conical to broadly conical, sometimes ventricosely conical or conoid-cylindrical in Indian Ocean shells; outline variably convex adapically, straight below. Shoulder angulate, occasionally approaching subangulate. Spire of low to moderate height, outline straight to concave or slightly sigmoid. Larval shell of about 3.75 whorls, maximum diameter 0.8- 1.0 mm. Teleoconch sutural ramps flat, sometimes concave in late whorls, with 1 increasing to 2-6 spiral grooves; on latest ramps, grooves usually obsolete in Pacific shells, distinct to obsolete in Indian Ocean shells. Last whorl either almost smooth or with weak to distinct, sometimes paired spiral ribs on basal third; in small adults, ribs occasionally from base beyond centre and slightly granulose.

Ground colour white, often variably suffused with light to darker rose or violet in E. African shells. Last whorl generally with a variably broad brown to orange-brown spiral band above and below centre, leaving ground-colour bands at shoulder, at or just below centre, and at base. In Indian Ocean shells, colour bands often yellowish to light brown and covering the entire last whorl; some shells from E. Africa with dark brown to dark red-brown spiral bands, and with central ground-colour band either edged by darker brown spots or crossed by axial markings. Closely spaced, dotted and dashed darker brown spiral lines may occur within the entire geographical range of the species. Larval whorls white to light brown in the Pacific, brownish violet in W. Australia, and pale yellow to orange in the W. Indian Ocean. Postnuclear sutural ramps variably maculated with brown radial streaks and blotches, sometimes immaculate in Indian Ocean shells. Aperture usually white in Pacific shells, violet in W. Australian shells, and white to violet in shells from the W. Indian Ocean.

In Japan and Taiwan, periostracum brown, thin and translucent, with widely spaced pairs of tufted spiral lines on last whorl and radial ridges forming subsutural fringes on spire; in specimens from Queensland eastward to the New Zealand and Kermadec area, periostracum brown, rather thick, opaque and smooth or with interlaced axial ridges; W. Australian shells with a thick, opaque and smooth periostracum that grades from brown to red towards the aperture (Turnbull, pers. comm., 1987); in W.Indian Ocean shells, periostracum greyish brown, thick, opaque, and with 15-20 widely spaced spiral rows of tufts.

In W. Australia, dorsum of foot red anteriorly; sole of foot pink, with black spots and a narrow transverse line; siphon pink, grading to red distally and to very pale pink laterally, with small black and white spots dorsally (Kohn, unpubl. observ.). Animal pale brown with a red siphon (Turnbull, pers. comm., 1987).

Specimens from W. Australia and Natal correspond closely in the morphology of their radular teeth: Tooth long and slender, with an adapical barb opposite to a blade, with a basal spur but without serration (Rolán, pers. comm., 1992; Kohn, unpubl. observ.).

Habitat and Habits: Intertidal to about 200 m; reported from bare limestone pavement or sand, sometimes among weed or coral rubble. Pacific animals in 20-200 m except for a rare intertidal occurrence in New Zealand. W. Australian specimens in coral reefs and intertidal flats to about 15 m. Specimens from Oman in the infralittoral fringe, those from E. Africa in 2-70 m (Cernohorsky, 1976; Marshall, 1981; Coomans & Filmer, 1985; Turnbull, pers. comm., 1987; Kilburn, unpubl. observ.). In W. Australia, C. lischkeanus feeds on Amphinomidae and Terebellidae (Kohn & Almasi, 1993), although its radular teeth lack the shape and armature of the teeth of typical amphinomid eaters.

Discussion: C. lischkeanus may be similar to C. fumigatus, and less often similar to C. sazanka or C. eximius. Small specimens from E. Africa may resemble C. articulatus. C. fumigatus attains larger size and has more widely spaced, coarser dashed and dotted spiral lines on the last whorl; its brown base contrasts with a lighter adjacent area and the spiral sculpture on its late sutural ramps is consistently obsolete. C. sazanka can be distinguished by its usually narrower last whorl (RD 0.56-0.63) and its undulate or weakly tuberculate shoulder; most specimens of C. sazanka and C. lischkeanus have distinctly different colours and patterns. For comparison of C. lischkeanus with C. eximius and C. articulatus see the DISCUSSION of these species. Coomans and Filmer (1985) recognized three geographic subspecies of C. lischkeanus, from the Kermadec Is., W. Australia and the W. Indian Ocean. However, within these regions, rather straight- sided and usually multicoloured shells with comparatively higher spires occur sympatrically with heavier, low-spired, rather convex-sided and often uniformly coloured shells as well as intermediate specimens. The morphological differences indicated by Coomans and Filmer (1985) are now known to be either slight or not consistently associated with geographic distribution. We thus abandon separation of this species into geographic subspecies. C. subroseus (Pl. 52, Figs. 9, 10) was based on subadult rose coloured specimens of C. lischkeanus from the Gulf of Aden (Röckel & Korn, 1993).

C. lischkeanus 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.