Range: East Africa and Red Sea to W. Thailand.

Description: Small to moderately small, moderately light to moderately solid. Last whorl conical or ventricosely conical to broadly ventricosely conical; outline convex at adapical half, usually straight below. Large specimens have a transverse central ridge within aperture. Shoulder rounded to subangulate, infrequently angulate; finely tuberculate to almost smooth. Spire of low to moderate height, outline straight to convex. Teleoconch sutural ramps flat, with 2-3 spiral grooves in later whorls. Last whorl with obsolete to fine and smooth to finely granulose ribs around basal part.

Ground colour white to pale grey, often suffused with blue. Last whorl with pronounced spiral rows of alternating reddish brown and white dashes and dots from base to subshoulder area or to shoulder. Reddish brown axial blotches and one or a few narrow, light brown spiral bands may be located above centre. Base of columella purplish blue. Outer edges of late sutural ramps with brown dots, fine lines or, more often, bundles of lines between tubercles. Aperture light to dark purplish blue, occasionally with 2 pale bands, at centre and below shoulder.

Periostracum yellow, thin, translucent and smooth.

Dorsum of foot white, streaked with brown. Sole of foot mottled bright and dull white, with pinkish red or orange extremities. Rostrum orange to red. Tentacles white. Siphon bright white mottled with white or grey, tipped with pinkish orange or red (Kohn, 1968b & unpubl. observ.; Fainzilber et al.,1992).

Radular teeth with an adapical barb opposite a blade and a short serration ending anterior to the blade; central waist and basal spur present (Red Sea; Rolán, 1993). Bandel(1984) depicted a tooth without distinct barb, blade and central waist (Red Sea, as C. pusillus).

Habitat and Habits: Intertidal and upper subtidal, usually in 0.5-5 m; on beachrock benches and reef flats, on sand among vegetation, in rock crevices, on dead coral heads and rocks, and on reef limestone or beachrock with or without a thin layer of sand (Kohn 1968 b,c; Kohn & Nybakken, 1975; Sharabati, 1984; Grosch, pers. comm., 1989; Fainzilber et al., 1992). Diet reported to be similar to that of C. musicus (Kohn, 1968 c; Kohn & Nybakken, 1975).

Discussion: C. parvatus is a very closely related to C. musicus and to C. sponsalis. C. sponsalis differs in the colour pattern of its shell: no pronounced spiral rows of alternating brown and white dots and dashes; typical form with a double row of reddish brown axial flames; pronounced blotches between shoulder tubercles; and in the colouration of its animal. The more intensely patterned shells of C. parvatus from Réunion have a more straight-sided last whorl than those of C. sponsalis. Kohn (1968b) referred to this species it as the "Indian Ocean form of C. musicus." Walls [1979] described it as a geographic subspecies. The colour pattern of C. parvatus lacks the broad spiral bands of typical C. musicus and form mighelsi, and the brown central area of form ceylanensis. C. parvatus has a slightly more solid shell with a usually less angulate and less tuberculate shoulder and a smoother last whorl. However, because it occurs sympatrically with typical C. musicus in Sri Lanka, Andaman Islands and W. Thailand and intergrades have not been observed (Wils, 1986), we favour the status of a separate valid species. Reeve's C.pusillus refers obviously to this species, but it is a junior homonym and therefore not valid. Wils (1986) described shells from the Red Sea as C. parvatus sharmiensis, on the basis of minor shape and colour pattern differences, but examination of larger samples indicates that the geographic differences are not consistent.

C. parvatus 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.