Conus hughmorrisoni, a new species of cone snail from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea (Gastropoda: Conidae)

Abstract

Based on newly collected material from the Kavieng Lagoon Biodiversity Survey, we describe a new species of cone snail, Conus hughmorrisoni sp. nov., from the vicinity of Kavieng, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. It closely resembles the New Caledonian C. exiguus and the Philippine C. hanshassi, but differs from these species by having more numerous shoulder tubercles, by the shell’s sculpturing and details of the color pattern. We also sequenced a fragment of the mitochondrial COI gene of five specimens collected alive. All possessed very similar sequences (genetic distances < 0.3%), different from all the COI sequences of cone snails available in GenBank (genetic distances > 10%).