Range: Red Sea to Oman and Strait of Hormuz, probably also Kenya.
Description: Moderately small to medium-sized, moderately solid to solid. Last whorl broadly to broadly and ventricosely conical or pyriform; outline convex adapically, straight to concave below. Shoulder angulate, smooth or weakly tuberculate. Spire of low to moderate height, outline straight to convex. Teleoconch sutural ramps flat to concave, with 2 spiral grooves in early whorls, obsolete in late whorls. Last whorl smooth with weak spiral ribs at base.
| Shell Morphometry | ||
|---|---|---|
| L | 25-50 mm | |
| RW | 0.13-0.56 g/mm | |
| (L 25-43 mm) | ||
| RD | 0.72-0.85 | |
| PMD | 0.75-0.89 | |
| RSH | 0.10-0.20 | |
Ground colour white. Last whorl with numerous narrow, grey spiral bands, partially fusing into broader bands. Spiral rows of alternating black and white spots and dashes from base to shoulder. Teleoconch sutural ramps with black radial streaks between tubercles. Aperture reddish brown, external ground colour bands visible within, bluish white and opaque in larger specimens.
Periostracum yellow to green, thin, translucent to nearly opaque, smooth.
Animal yellow, mottled with brown flecks on foot and siphon (Ehrenberg, 1828; Bergh, 1895). Foot dirty brown, spotted with red and black. Tentacles greyish white. Siphon rust red, spotted with black (Fainzilber et al., 1992).
Radular teeth with a very small adapical barb opposite a blade; serration extends nearly to the central waist of the shaft; base with a spur (Bergh, 1895). Bandel (1984) depicted a very short serration ending well above the central waist.
Habitat and Habits: Intertidally, on algal turf on rocks, in sand bound by algal turf, and in sand among rocks (Bosch & Bosch, 1982; Sharabati, 1984). C. taeniatus feeds on polychaetes (Dance & von Cosel, 1977; Fainzilber et al., 1992).
Discussion: C. taeniatus appears most closely related to C. coronatus, but its shell is very distinctive in comparison to other Indo-Pacific Conus species.
C. taeniatus 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.