Turks and Caicos

The year 2017 began with a trip to French Cay, Turks and Caicos. We were curious to see if the diversity of tiny Conidae observed in the Cayman Islands was similar in that area, about which very little is known in terms of gastropod diversity. We were surprised to find that the elusive Conus patae is the most abundant species along walls at 10 to 25 m. In the shallow water, we observed several variations of a small Jaspidiconus which was described as J. lusca Berschauer & Petuch 2017 later that year. We restricted our collecting to taking beached samples, but still ended up with more than 100 species of gastropods.