Range: Marquesas.

Description: Moderately small, usually moderately solid. Last whorl generally conical to broadly conical, straight to slightly convex in outline. Shoulder angulate, prominently tuberculate. Spire of low to moderate height, somewhat convex to concave in outline. Postnuclear spire whorls tuberculate. Teleoconch sutural ramps nearly flat, with 2 increasing to 4-5 spiral grooves. Basal half of last whorl with spaced spiral ribs and adjacent punctuate grooves, occasionally extending to shoulder.

Ground colour bluish white. Last whorl with 2 interrupted to solid, olive brown or reddish brown spiral bands, leaving ground- colour bands at shoulder edge and well above as well as just below centre. Shoulder band usually narrow and suffused with pale red. Numerous closely spaced spiral rows of alternating white and brown dashes or dots from base to subshoulder area or shoulder. Teleoconch sutural ramps with fine brown axial lines and with dark brown dashes along the outer edge between tubercles. Aperture violet-brown, with pale bands centrally and below shoulder.

Habitat and Habits: In 0.5-6 m; on reefs, sand, boulders and beneath rocks.

Discussion: C. encaustus is closely allied to the allopatric species C. abbreviatus and C. miliaris. C. abbreviatus may attain larger size (up to 58 mm) and tends to have a higher spire and a broader last whorl; it is more convex in outline and lacks the pronounced, olive or brownish spiral banding, the intermittent white dashes or dots within the lines around last whorl and the brown lining at the shoulder edges of C. encaustus. C. miliaris tends to have a broader, often ventricosely conical last whorl, lacks the pronounced brown lining of the shoulder edges, and has the white and brown elements less regularly arranged within the spiral rows. The colour of typical C. miliaris lacks grey, bluish and olive tones.

C. encaustus 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.