Babelomurex miyokoae Kosuge, 1985

Oliverio, Marco, 2008, Coralliophilinae (Neogastropoda: Muricidae) from the southwest Pacific, Mémoires du Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle 196, pp. 481-586 : 545

Babelomurex miyokoae Kosuge, 1985

Figs 100, 101, 185

Babelomurex miyokoae Kosuge, 1985b: 54-55 , pl. 19, figs 4-6, 9.

TYPE MATERIAL. — Holotype IMT 85-11 [not seen], figured by Kosuge & Suzuki (1985: pl. 21, fig. 12, pl. 32, fig. 5).

TYPE LOCALITY. — Bohol, Philippines .

MATERIAL EXAMINED. — Coral Sea. MUSORSTOM 5: stn 329, Plateau des Chesterfield, 20°23’S, 158°47’E, 320 m, 1 dd.

DISTRIBUTION. — West Pacific: Ogasawara Islands, Japan (Tsuchiya 2000: 411), and the Philippines. Coral Sea, one empty shell in 320 m, range extension to the southwest Pacific.

REMARKS. — Protoconch missing the embryonic whorls, of 2.6+ whorls, 750+ Μm high, 780 Μm wide at the base. Sculpture of 2 spiral keels, each sculptured by a series of opisthocline threads, and an additional series of subsutural prosocline threads. A diffuse granulation is present in the interspaces. Sinusigera outer lip. Variation in the protoconch of shells resembling B. miyokoae is observed at several sites in the western Pacific (MO unpublished), with number of protoconch whorls ranging from 1.5 to 3.5. Since shells of this group are very rare and adults tend to lose the protoconch, I take a conservative approach in this revision for the single record, pending availability of more material for the description of other taxa. All shells from the Philippines with intact apical whorls that I have examined have the same protoconch as the present specimen from the Coral Sea.