Cytharomorula grayi (Dall 1889)

Type of larval development: planktotrophic, inferred from multispiral protoconch.

Shell up to 25 mm high, fusiform, with moderately high spire. Protoconch of 3-4 smooth whorls. Teleoconch sculpture of low, rouned spiral cords, narrower than the intervening spaces, somentimes wit a smaller cord intercalated, and of broad axial folds which reach very far abapically on the body whorl. The first teleoconch whorls have only 2-4 cords, one of which tends to form a shoulder which is lost on te later whorls. Aperture strongly thickened externally and internally, the inner rim with 4-5 rounded denticles; columella sometimes also with 1-2 faint knobs delimiting the siphonal canal, which is short and broadly open. Colour whitish with reddish-brown lines running on the larger cords and with large, blurry brown blotches along the periphery of the body whorl.

From the Lesser Antilles in 100-450 m to southern Brazil in the western Atlantic; in the eastern Atlantic in the Canary Islands, Madeira and the banks off Portugal (Josephine, Seine and Ampère seamounts), moderately common in 165-310 m, but not on the mainland European continental shelf. Also off Saint Helena, South Africa, Walters Shoal, Mozambique, Reunion, Mayotte, Comoros and Glorieuses Islands, Indian Ocean, there living in 128-275 m.

Known from seamounts and knolls