My first encounter with a L. porteri was at the meeting
and bourse of the Club Conchylia, the German shell collector's
club. My Dad had taken me to Hamburg on a warm October Saturday
in 1980, I was aged 14 and as excited as a boy of that age can
possibly get. I will never forget the kindness and enthusiasm
of the people, the pleasant conversations with collectors and
dealers. There was the first guttata I ever saw, and I
was allowed to put it in my hands. One dealer had two albino
decipiens at ten times the price of a regular decipiens
(...), but a porteri was the star of the bourse, at a
price one could have bought a small motorcar back in those days.
I was a bit disappointed about the grey color of it, as back
then I thought porteri was an almost unreal lemon-green
critter, you know what I mean??*
Rumors spread
that somebody had actually bought the shell already. I could
not believe it. Who could have told back then what could happen
within a quarter of a century's time...... for instance that
a) those decipiens albinos were soon to become
the most sought after mariellae - what a nice investment
that could have been, and
b) the person who indeed
bought the porteri was to become one of my best shelling-friends,
Ludwig Gabrielli, and
c) I would have a few dozen
porteris in my collection-drawers to finally one day find
myself writing something about them on a thing called Apple G3,
read by hundreds of cowry-enthusiasts paying me a visit on a
thing called the internet. But I am beginning to repeat myself
- another thing that a quarter of a century can do ....
*take a look at Burgess 1970 "The Living Cowries" - that was the bible on cowries at that time.
There are now three taxa, apparently closely allied: Lyncina porteri porteri, L. porteri nigromaculata and L. joycae, which was considered a subspecies of porteri for a long time. As more shells have become available, its conchological features proved constant enough to separate it as a full species. Finally, porteri and joycae share large parts of their distributions.
1) Lyncina porteri porteri Cate 1966
Distribution: Philippines, Taiwan, Japan
Habitat: In caves at 15 m, to 200 m
Diagnosis: Depressed, rotund, very callused along the margins, extremities rostrate. Teeth fine on both sides, rather short labrally. Base orange. Dorsum with numerous tiny and few larger spots.
2) Lyncina porteri nigromaculata Lorenz 2002
Distribution: Queensland, Melanesia to western Polynesia
Habitat: In ledges along wall at 14 m (Vanuatu), dredged on rubble bottom at 150-250 m (New Caledonia, Fiji)
Diagnosis: Less depressed, rotund, less callused along the margins, extremities rostrate. Teeth fine on both sides, rather short labrally. Base yellowish. Dorsum with numerous tiny and few larger spots.
3) Lyncina joycae Clover 1970
Distribution: Taiwan, Japan, China
Habitat: Dredged on rubble bottom at 100-350 m
Diagnosis: Inflated, rotund, slightly callused along the margins, extremities less rostrate, blunt posteriorly. Teeth coarser on both sides, rather long labrally. Base greyish. Dorsum with numerous tiny but fewer large spots. A variation from China is larger, depressed, with dark grey dorsum and saturate orange sides. The dentition of this form resembles joycae rather than porteri.
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| L. p. porteri (blue), L. p. nigromaculata (green) | L. joycae (blue), L. joycae variation (red) |
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| Lyncina porteri porteri, 46 mm, Zamboanga PI. | Lyncina porteri porteri, 43 mm, Bohol, Philippines |
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| Lyncina porteri porteri, inflated variation, 49 mm, Taiwan | Lyncina porteri porteri, 52 mm, Okinawa |
