With their colorful shells, Alphabet Cones, Conus spurius Gmelin, 1791, are one of the most celebrated local mollusks in Southwest Florida. Alphabet Cones hatch from egg capsules, swim only for a couple of hours at most, then settle to the bottom as young adults. The photos of the larval Alphabet Cones were taken just after hatching and published for the first time in a 2017 American Malacological Bulletin article by National Shell Museum staff (José H. Leal and Rebecca Mensch) in cooperation with cone snail expert Alan J. Kohn of the University of Washington in Seattle.
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Caption: The Alphabet Cone, Conus spurius, shell and larvae. Photos by José H. Leal.