According to Houart 1992, figure 5b is banksii.

I have made up a database on Muricidae which runs to 48 pages of small
print plus 10 pages of corrections to various publications. It is a MAJOR
mess, and it must be a tremendous amount of work to research the history on
a single species such as Vokes and Houart have done.

At 10:35 AM 9/11/00 -0400, you wrote:
>I see that my e-mail from my new server is coming through with just my first
>name as the sender.  Sorry about that, I'll try to remedy it tonight.  But I
>might as well take this opportunity to announce that I am phasing out
>[log in to unmask], and my new e-mail (at home) is [log in to unmask]  My e-mail
>at work remains unchanged.
>
>Now let's see if I can further muddy the waters surrounding Chicoreus
>axicornis, by pointing out another problem in one of our most popular books
>(this one, like the previous one, brought to my attention by Lori
>Schroeder).  The target publication this time is Springsteen & Leobrera's
>Shells of the Philippines.  On plate 36 (page 133) there are two
>illustrations purporting to represent Chicoreus axicornis.  The picture on
>the left (figure 5a) is described as the form kawamurai.  Agreed!  This is
>the smaller  form with shorter, hook-tipped spines.  And, like every
>specimen of C. axicornis I have ever seen, kawamurai or otherwise, it has
>two major lip spines (often with a smaller spinelet between), and two major,
>simple canal spines.  The problem is figure 5b, which the authors describe
>as the "typical form" of C. axicornis. Huh??  The shell has four thick
>foliated spines on the lip, the posterior one larger than than the other
>three, plus three similar spines on the canal, which to my way of thinking
>is about as unaxicornislike as you can get.  I think this shell looks more
>like C. banksii.  In fact, note the similarity between figure 5b, and figure
>8a which IS C. banksii.  I don't think the book actually contains a picture
>of the real "typical" C. axicornis.  Any opinions?
>Paul M.

John Wolff
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