Conus hughmorrisoni, a new species of cone snail from New Ireland, Papua New Guinea (Gastropoda: Conidae)

Based on newly collected material from the Kavieng Lagoon Biodiversity Survey, we describe a new species of cone snail, <em>Conus hughmorrisoni</em> sp. nov., from the vicinity of Kavieng, New Ireland, Papua New Guinea. It closely resembles the New Caledonian <em>C. exiguus</em> and the Philippine <em>C. hanshassi</em>, but differs from these species by having more numerous shoulder tubercles, by the shell’s sculpturing and details of the color pattern. We also sequenced a fragment of the mitochondrial COI gene of five specimens collected alive. All possessed very similar sequences (genetic distances &lt; 0.3%), different from all the COI sequences of cone snails available in GenBank (genetic distances &gt; 10%)