Varioconus Da Motta, 1991

Tenorio, Manuel J., Abalde, Samuel, Pardos-Blas, José R. & Zardoya, Rafael, 2020, Taxonomic revision of West African cone snails (Gastropoda: Conidae) based upon mitogenomic studies: implications for conservation, European Journal of Taxonomy 663 (663), pp. 1-89 : 63

Genus Varioconus Da Motta, 1991

Da Motta (1991) originally introduced the taxon Varioconus as a subgenus of Conasprella Thiele, 1929 using the contour of the shell as criterion. The subgenus included West African species from Angola, Senegal and elsewhere, but not from the Cabo Verde Archipelago. Later, Tucker & Tenorio (2009) elevated the rank of Varioconus to genus, and only maintained in it the endemic cones from Angola, whereas most of the remaining West African cones were placed in the genus Lautoconus . Now, we find that the reconstructed phylogeny and the observed genetic distances support the original proposal by Da Motta (1991), and the genus Varioconus actually includes species from Angola, Senegal, Gambia and other locations like Canary Islands or Saint Helena. The species of Varioconus endemic to Angola are not included in the present revision. These taxa are being sequenced systematically, and the results will be reported elsewhere in due course.