The « Dohrn’s Volute » is an attractively patterned volute with about eight rows of almost equally spaced dark square patches on the body whorl. Ranging from eastern Florida to Gulf of Mexico to southern Cuba, it is a carnivorous and predatory gastropod inhabiting sandy bottoms of rather deep water around -100~500m. An uncommon species, it is usually dredged dead and prone to growth scars; live-taken specimens in good quality are rare. The early whorls may be shouldered, bearing a single row of closely spaced nodules. Typical shell length around 70mm., very large specimens may exceed 130mm.

AS Scaphella cf. bermudezi (Clench and Aguayo, 1940) DEEP WATER
Distribution: Florida, Texas. Size: 138 mm (5.5 in).
Description: Color pale cream wirh regular, somewhat large brown spots; shape fusiform, shell sturdy; sculpture of teleoconch with spiral lines crossed by irregu¬lar axial threads; a spiral row of nodules on distinct shoulders of convex whorls; spire extended, nuclear whorl smooth; aperture elongate, more than half the shell length; columella plicate with a narrow groove; siphonal canal slightly twisted. Habitat: Specimen in photograph found in Alaminos Canyon at a depth of about 333 m (1110 ft). Depth range 218 to 695 m (715 to 2280 ft). Remarks: Rare species; usually found in deep water. Characterized by narrow form, columellar plicae, and higher spire. See Clench (1946); Abbott (1974).

Description. Shell large, reaching about 100 mm. (4 inches) in length, fusiform and fairly solid. Whorls 7, strongly convex. Color a more or less uniform yellowish orange with nine or ten spiral rows of square dark brown spots. Aperture elliptical and somewhat lengthened. Spire acute and moderately lengthened. Suture slightly indented. Outer lip thin: parietal wall thinly glazed. Columella moderately arched with three to four rather well developed plicae. Siphonal canal rather broad and arched dorsally. Sculpture: nuclear whorl smooth, remaining whorls with exceedingly fine incised spiral lines which persist to the body whorl: these are somewhat coarser toward the base. No axial costae developed. Nuclear whorl and calearella very small and moderately extended.
Remarks. (See also under S.(dubia). This species is also close to S.florida and this latter
may he possibly only a form of the present one. However, differentiation between the
two is readily made and there is a difference in their ranges. The young of many of these several forms are difficult if not impossible to separate, as the diagnostic characters are
mainly invested in the adult, the early whorls being quite similar.
This species differs from S. florida by possessing smoothly rounded whorls, not angled as S.florida, and in lacking completely the axial costae, so pronounced in this other species. From S. bermudezi, which appears to resemble dohrni, it differs by possessing only three or four well spaced, low and smoothly rounded columellar plicae. There are four rail-like (cross-section) plicae in bermudezi. From S. atlantis it differs in being smaller, heavier and far more yellowish in color and having far fewer axial rows of spots (9 or 10 rows in dohrni and 15 in atlantis).
Scaphella dohrni is known to occur in depths of from 75 to 144 fathoms (450 to 804 feet).
Range Known only from off the Lower Florida Keys in the vicinity of Key West and Tortugas, Florida.