My first encounter with a L. porteri was at the meeting and bourse of the Club Conchylia, the German shell collector's club, on a warm October Saturday in 1980. I will never forget the friendly atmosphere, the pleasant conversations with collectors and dealers the German Shell club meetings are famous for till today. 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...*

*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.

L. p. porteri (blue), L. p. nigromaculata (green)	L. joycae (blue), L. joycae variation (red)

Lyncina porteri porteri, 46 mm, Zamboanga PI.	Lyncina porteri porteri, 43 mm, Bohol, Philippines

Lyncina porteri porteri, inflated variation, 49 mm, Taiwan	Lyncina porteri porteri, 52 mm, Okinawa

Lyncina porteri nigromaculata, 48 mm, Vanuatu	Lyncina porteri nigromaculata, 48 mm, New Caledonia

Lyncina joycae, 57 mm, Taiwan	Lyncina joycae, 50 mm, Taiwan

Lyncina joycae, 61 mm, Taiwan	Lyncina joycae, 58 mm, Taiwan

Lyncina joycae variation, China

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