Range: Natal to Mascarenes, Somalia, S. Oman and S. India.

Description: Medium-sized to large, moderately solid to heavy. Last whorl conical to ventricosely conical, outline convex at adapical fourth to third and straight below. Shoulder angulate to subangulate or almost rounded, usually with a fine carina. Spire low, outline concave to slightly convex or sigmoid. About first 5 postnuclear whorls weakly tuberculate. Teleoconch sutural ramps flat to slightly sigmoid, with 3-4 spiral grooves, changing to many striae in late whorls. Last whorl with obsolete spiral ribs at base.

Colour bluish violet or white shaded with violet or cream. Last whorl usually with a paler spiral band at centre; in shells from India and Oman, a weak to prominent, variably broad, violet to orange spiral band on each side of centre. Larval whorls white. Teleoconch spire tinged or radially streaked with pinkish orange or pinkish violet. Aperture white, pale violet or pale orange.

Periostracum dark red brown and opaque (specimens from Natal), light brown and thin (Coomans & Moolenbeek, 1982).

Animal reddish brown (Veillard, 1972). Radular teeth long and slender, with 2 opposite adapical barbs; long serration from end of anterior barb 2/3 the length down the shaft; basal spur absent (Rolán, pers. comm., 1992).

Habitat and Habits: In 40-140 m; holotype reported from muddy sand bottom.

Discussion: C. berdulinus is most similar to C. kintoki and also resembles C. coelinae and C. martensi. The latter species differs in its more angulate shoulder, more prominent spiral sculpture on the late sutural ramps, non-tuberculate postnuclear whorls, and yellow to orange colour. For comparison with C. coelinae and C. kintoki, see the Discussions of those species. In shells from S. India (Pl. 31, Fig. 8), the last whorl has prominent spiral colour bands and a less convex adapical region than in those from Natal (Pl. 31, Figs. 10, 12) or Réunion. Specimens from Somalia (Pl. 31, Fig. 13) and the Kuria Muria Is. (Pl. 31, Fig. 11) are intermediate in colour pattern.

C. berdulinus 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.