Monteiroconus da Motta, 1991

Harzhauser, Mathias & Landau, Bernard, 2016, A revision of the Neogene Conidae and Conorbidae (Gastropoda) of the Paratethys Sea, Zootaxa 4210 (1), pp. 1-178 : 101-102

Genus Monteiroconus da Motta, 1991

Type species (by original designation): Conus ambiguus Reeve, 1844 . Recent , West Africa.

Note. According to Tucker & Tenorio (2009), shells of the genus Monteiroconus da Motta, 1991 are characterised by having concave spire whorls with cords present or absent; the spire may be convex in profile; the subsutural sinus is shallow to moderately deep, and the protoconch is multispiral. The genus has a rich European fossil record and today has a West African distribution. The molecular phylogeny presented by Puillandre et al. (2014a) confirmed the group to be monophyletic, although the authors recognise these groups at subgenus level. However, they also included two species ( C. gladiator Broderip, 1833 and C. mus Hwass in Brugière, 1792 ), which one would not have expected based on shell characters, as both of these species have coarse tubercles on the spire whorls. Moreover, they both have a Caribbean distribution, whereas Monteiroconus as defined by Tucker & Tenorio (2009) is West African. We provisionally restrict the usage of the genus to that suggested by Tucker & Tenorio (2009).

Monteiroconus is a speciose conid genus in the Paratethyan assemblages. Based on these species we add that the genus is characterised by moderately large to large-sized, relatively solid shells. The spire is low to almost flat and in most species the spire whorls are striate. Often, spire whorls are bulgy along the lower suture. The subsutural flexures in all the species treated here are medium deep to deep, moderately to strongly curved and moderately to strongly asymmetrical. The relative diameter of the last whorl and length of the siphonal canal are variable but generally species have a wide to moderately wide last whorl.