Range: Taiwan, Philippines, Papua New Guinea.

Description: Small, light. Last whorl broadly conical, broadly ventricosely conical or slightly pyriform; outline variably convex adapically and straight to concave below. Shoulder angulate, distinctly tuberculate to undulate. Spire of moderate height, occasionally high; outline straight to slightly concave. Larval shell of about 1.75 whorls, maximum diameter about 1 mm. Postnuclear spire whorls tuberculate to undulate. Teleoconch sutural ramps flat, with 3 increasing to 4-5 spiral grooves; ribs between often crossed by arcuate axial threads producing a cancellate appearance. Entire last whorl with distinct, widely spaced, granulose spiral ribs; interspaces occasionally with a single fine, punctate spiral groove.

Ground colour white, usually variously suffused with yellowish brown, pink, or rose. Last whorl with a varying number of variably spaced brown dots arrayed on the spiral ribs; in some populations, dots completely absent. Larval whorls white to red. Teleoconch sutural ramps with scattered brown markings or immaculate. Aperture white, pale yellow or pale pink.

Periostracum yellowish brown to olive, thin, translucent, and smooth.

Habitat and Habits: Shallow water.

Discussion: C. axelrodi is similar to the Caribbean C. puncticulatus. C. puncticulatus and its close relatives C. jaspideus (Caribbean) and C. perplexus (E. Pacific) are all clearly distinguished by their non-tuberculate postnuclear whorls, smooth sutural ramps, and spiral ribbons rather than ribs on the last whorl. C. axelrodi has often been identified as C. papillosus Kiener (e.g. Richard, 1990). It conforms generally to the description of that species; however, the original figure of C. papillosus, now lost, is 25 mm long, and it is more likely a specimen of C. puncticulatus Hwass (Vink, 1990).

C. axelrodi 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.