Range: Natal, N.W. Madagascar, Providence Id. (Seychelles), and S. coast of Oman.
Description: Medium-sized to moderately large, moderately solid to solid. Last whorl conical, outline convex at adapical fourth and straight below. Shoulder angulate. Spire of low to moderate height, outline straight to sigmoid or concave. Larval shell of about 3 whorls (Moolenbeek & Coomans, 1987), maximum diameter of about 1 mm. Teleoconch sutural ramps flat, with 3 increasing to 4-6 spiral grooves; latest ramps may only have 3-4 grooves. Last whorl with weak or obsolete spiral ribs at base.
| Shell Morphometry | ||
|---|---|---|
| L | 40-78 mm | |
| RW | 0.18-0.52 g/mm | |
| RD | 0.50-0.60 | |
| PMD | 0.86-0.88 | |
| RSH | 0.05-0.16 | |
Colour yellow to orange. Last whorl often with 2 paler spiral bands, at centre and at shoulder. Larval whorls brown. Postnuclear sutural ramps white, suffused with colour tones of last whorl. Aperture white to pale yellow.
Periostracum light to olive brown, of varying thickness, opaque, and axially ridged.
Habitat and Habits: In 40-150 m. Specimens from Natal inhabit zone of sand and sponges along the inner continental shelf (Kilburn, pers. comm., 1989); specimens off Mahajanga, Madagascar on reef substrate with sponges (Schmidt, pers. comm., 1990).
Discussion: C. martensi is similar to C. berdulinus. For the distinctions see the DISCUSSION of the latter species. The description given above is based on recently discovered material from Natal, Madagascar, and Oman. In 1986, da Motta described this specis as C. alconnelli (Pl. 32, Fig. 2), but one year later Moolenbeek & Coomans (1987) proposed that these shells were conspecific with C. martensi, previously known only from a dead-collected,chipped subadult specimen (Pl. 32, Fig. 1). We tentatively accept this conclusion.
C. martensi 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.