Tucker & Tenorio cone snail taxonomy 2009

The taxonomy of the cone snails and their allies as proposed by John K. Tucker and Manuel J. Tenorio in 2009 was a biological classification system for a large group of predatory sea snails. This system was an attempt to make taxonomic sense of the large and diverse group which contains the family Conidae, the cone snails. The authors proposed extensive changes to the family Conidae in contrast to the way the group was treated in the taxonomy of the Gastropoda by Bouchet & Rocroi, 2005. Bouchet and Rocroi included in the family Conidae several other groups of toxoglossan snails which had previously been placed in the Turridae.

For the over 600 recognized species of living cone snails, Tucker and Tenorio’s classification system proposed 3 distinct families and 82 genera. The authors discussed in detail 89 genera and five families in total (that have the inner shell walls resorbed during growth), including fossil cone snail genera and snails which were previously traditionally classified as turrids. This classification was based upon shell morphology, radular differences, anatomy, physiology, cladistics, and an analysis of then published molecular phylogeny (DNA) studies. The genera proposed by Tucker and Tenorio are recognized as an "alternate representation" by the World Register of Marine Species. The authors further proposed a modification to the classification of Bouchet & Rocroi (2005) for ten additional Conoidea families (which do not resorb their inner walls) which included turrids which had been placed in the Conidae by Taylor, et al. in 1993. This proposed taxonomic classification separated the turrid snails from the cone snails, which were considered to be a distinct and diverse group.

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