Taranteconus Azuma, 1972

Tenorio, Manuel J. & Puillandre, Nicolas, 2023, Revision of the deep-water cone snail fauna from New Caledonia (Gastropoda, Conoidea), European Journal of Taxonomy 896, pp. 1-134 : 110

Subgenus Taranteconus Azuma, 1972

According to Phuong et al. (2019), Conus (Taranteconus) chiangi ( Azuma, 1972) , which is the type species of the (sub)genus Taranteconus , is sister to a clade containing the Indo-Pacific species assigned to the (sub)genus Rhombiconus Tucker & Tenorio, 2009 . These two groups are sister to another clade composed of western Atlantic and eastern Pacific species of cones, including Conus (Stephanoconus) regius Gmelin, 1791 , the type species of the (sub)genus Stephanoconus M̂rch, 1852. All these species from very distant geographic areas had so far been lumped in the supraspecific taxon Stephanoconus . In addition to the geographic separation, the species in Taranteconus exhibit very distinct shell and radular morphologies which allow a clear separation from species in Stephanoconus and also from Rhombiconus (Tucker & Tenorio 2013) . Hence, the phylogenetic relationship between the (sub) genera Taranteconus , Rhombiconus and Stephanoconus is formally analogous to that existing between Kurodaconus , Mitraconus and Turriconus (see above). For this reason, we hereby consider Taranteconus a valid supraspecific taxon, rather than a synonym of Stephanoconus .