Bistolida goodallii fuscomaculata (Pease, 1865)
Dark-blotched Goodall's cowry, 8-16mm

In recent years, this species has been very rare at Kwajalein. In the 1960s and 1970s, there was a healthy population on a shallow reef on the lagoon side of the south end of Ennubuj (Carlson) Island, but this seemed to have vanished by the 1980s. The only other place the species has been found with some regularity is on the intertidal reef, particularly between Kwajalein and Little Bustard and between Bigej and Meck Islands. However, finding the shell there requires many hours of backbreaking labor looking under rocks at low tide. Specimens have also been found in the man-made reef quarry off Gagan Island in the northern part of Kwajalein Atoll. Other than that, specimens can very rarely be seen to depths of about 8m on some large lagoon pinnacles, such as those off Kwadak Island, or even more rarely in seaward reef surge channels at night, where the few specimens found have all been in the shallower portions of the channels nearest the intertidal reef.

Subspecific names (e.g., fuscomaculata in this species) can be useful for designating populations usually from different areas that consistently vary from one another. We typically do not use them in these pages, but refer the reader to the excellent references listed on the cowry intro page for more details. In this case, there is some thought that the fuscomaculata subspecies of Bistolida goodallii may represent a full, valid species of its own, so we have used it here. The fuscomaculata form differs from more the standard Bistolida goodallii primarily in the much darker and larger spots on each side of the shell on both the anterior and posterior ends. The standard Bistolida goodallii is found in much of Polynesia (excluding Hawaii), while B. goodallii fuscomaculata is from parts of Micronesia and Melanesia. This species was named for a well-known British shell collector of the 18th and 19th centuries, Sir Joseph Goodall. The subspecific name refers to the dark anterior and posterior blotches.

Below is a slightly juvenile specimen that has not finished its dorsal blotchy pattern yet.

Created 1 April 2008
Updated 15 December 2011

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