Range: Seychelles to Strait of Malacca and Indonesia (Bali).

Description: Medium-sized to large, solid to moderately heavy. Last whorl conical, outline almost straight, slightly convex adapically. Shoulder angulate to subangulate, strongly to weakly tuberculate. Spire of low to moderate height; outline variably sigmoid, with convex apex. Postnuclear spire whorls tuberculate to strongly tuberculate. Late teleconch sutural ramps concave, with often obsolete spiral striation. Last whorl with weak spiral ribs at base.

Ground colour white. Last whorl with 3 usually continuous bluish grey spiral bands, below shoulder and on both sides of centre; posterior bands may be variably fused. Rather evenly spaced orange-brown spiral lines extending from base to shoulder. Base and basal part of columella dark bluish brown. Teleoconch sutural ramps with brown to bluish brown radial markings. Aperture white, bluish brown at base.

Foot, rostrum and siphon rose or pink. Dorsum of foot and rostrum heavily mottled with dark brown. Sole of foot lightly mottled with dark brown or black. Siphon with a darker tip. Tentacles white, mottled with pink. Penis pale pink (Maldives, Thailand; Kohn, unpubl. observ.).

Radular teeth large, with a small adapical barb followed by a large second barb; adapical portion of the inner fold with a double row of denticles ending in an internal barb; large base with 2 protruding pointed spurs (Peile, 1939; Nybakken, 1970).

Habitat and Habits: Shallow water to about 30 m, on hard substrata of coral reefs. C. zonatus feeds on Amuphinomidae (Kohn, 1968b; Kohn & Nybakken, 1975; Nybakken, 1970).

Discussion: C. zonatus is similar to C. imperialis in size, shape of shell, colouration of the animal, shape and armature of the radular teeth and in the diet of the animal. However, the latter species differs in the colour pattern of its last whorl, exhibiting variable arranged spiral rows of alternating black /brown and white dashes and numerous spiral rows of minute brown dots, in contrast to the evenly spaced solid lines of C. sonatus. In addition, C. imperialis usually has only 2 instead of 3 colour bands around the last whorl. For comparison with C. biraghii, see the Discussion of the latter species.

C. zonatus 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.