Dear Carol and others interested,

In the book Cone Shells from the Cape Verde Islands:
"A difficult puzzle", by Röckel, Rolán & Monteiro
(1980), these authors refer to the following:

"...The consideration of C. ateralbus Kiener as a
valid species has been quite controversial. Lost for
many years, despite the extreme accuracy of Kiener’s
illustrations, it was brought back into the
malacological scene by Burnay and Monteiro (1977) as a
valid species. Several researchers disagreed,
considering C. ateralbus as anything from C. venulatus
Hwass to gerontic C. cuneolus Reeve!..."

"...Setting a-side the obviously wrong hypothesis,
there remained the problem of C. ateralbus Kiener
being synonymous with C. venulatus Hwass, as suggested
by many. Let us remark right away that the existence
of several constant differences between the two would
give C, ateralbus at least a sub-specific rank, far
more than a mere synonym, provided that geographical
separation holded..."


Personal observations, for the many specimens of Conus
ateralbus collected in Sal Island (Cape Verdes), the
colour and pattern variations with in this specie are
almost absent. On the other had Conus venulatus, also
collected in Sal Island, is extremely variable in
colour. Observations by Rólan (1991) for Sal Island on
the family Conidae and in particular for these two
species, match the ones I have encountered recently.
This author, in his fabulous work, says.
"...variabilidade de dibujo y color es muy escasa..."
for C. ateralbus.
I think you don’t have to be an experienced collector
or researcher, to fine obvious differences between
these two "species" after collecting them and having
fare numbers of each one of them. The problem about
the Cone species of the Cape Verde is that if you
don’t collected them by your self (or trade or buy
them with full data) it will be very difficult do
identify them afterwards. You must know exactly where
them came from, from what Bay, what habitat, what
depth, etc ..., not just a label saying Sal Island
Cape Verdes. This will be a first big step to ID Cones
from the Cape Verde Islands. All thought Sal is a
small Island you can wonder around hunting C.
ateralbus for days, weeks and still come up with
nothing ... if you have the wrong data on your lable
:-)

Best regards, Carlos Afonso (South Portugal)


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