Range: Indian Ocean to Indonesia; absent from Red Sea.

Description: Medium-sized to moderately large, solid to moderately heavy. Last whorl conical, conoid-cylindrical or broadly and ventricosely conical; outline convex above base and below shoulder, almost straight in between. Shoulder rounded, irregularly undulate. Spire of low to moderate height, outline straight to deeply concave. Larval shell of about 2.75 whorls, maximum diameter 0.8- 1 mm. Postnuclear spire whorls tuberculate, less so toward shoulder. Teleoconch sutural ramps flat. Concave in late whorls, with 1 increasing to 3-4 spiral grooves. Last whorl with variably broad spiral ribs at base.

Ground colour whte, suffused with cream, pink or violet. Last whorl with grey to violet clouds, underlaying numerous short, fine, brown axial dashes, variously shaped and arranged black markings, and spiral rows of small alternating dark and light brown bars. Dark brown elements usually aligned in 2 incomplete spiral bands, on both sides of centre, often forming a weak additional band below shoulder. Larval whorls white. Teleoconch sutural ramps crossed by fine brown curved lines and sparse black blotches. Aperture light to pinkish violet deep within.

Periostracum yellowish brown, thin, slightly translucent, smooth.

Sole and sides of foot brown. Rostrum light brown. Siphon with a dark pink tip, shading lighter proximally, followed by white, brown and white bands (Kohn, 1978a).

Radular teeth stout, with an adapical barb opposite a second barb; serration not longer than second barb; shaft with a cusp and a waist just anterior to the centre; base with a distinct spur (Peile, 1939).

Habitat and Habits: Subtidal, to about 35 m; on mud, sand and rubble.

Discussion: C. zeylanicus resembles C. caracteristicus in its shell characters. For comparison, see the Discussion of the latter species.
C. undulatus is usually considered to represent a synonym of C. textile. However, it differs from the latter species in shape and pattern but is similar in colour pattern to certain variants of C. zeylanicus; therefore it is tentatively placed in the synonymy of this species. If this is substantiated, C. undulatus will be an unused senior synonym, and the name C. zeylanicus must be retained.

C. zeylanicus 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.