Shell small for species, heavy and thickened, distinctly pyriform; shoulder sharply angled, bordered by strong raised carina; subsutural area sloping on body whorl, flatter and slightly depressed or canaliculate on spire whorls; spire high, protracted, elevated, distinctly stepped and scalariform; suture bordered by narrow, deep channel; shell heavily ornamented with numerous strong spiral cords, which are strongest on shoulder and around siphonal canal; shell colored pale bluish-gray and yellow-cream overlaid with regularly spaced dark brown amorphous longitudinal flammules, which extend onto spire whorls; interior of aperture heavily ornamented with numerous strong lirae, colored deep brown within; inner edge of lip and siphonal canal white with few small brown patches along edge; protoconch pale tan, proportionally large and bulbous, composed of 1.5 whorls. Holotype: Length 57.8 mm, width 34 mm, FMNH 328418.

Found in a sand pocket on a sponge bioherm, 1.5 m depth off the northeastern end of Little Torch Key, Lower Florida Keys, Monroe County, Florida. Discussion: The common pear whelk, Fulguropsis spiratum pyruloides (Say, 1822), which is found in shallow coastal waters in the Carolinas, Georgia, and both sides of the Floridian Peninsula, has never been reported from the coral reef areas of the Florida Keys reef tract or the shallow carbonate sand areas of the lower Keys. Recent investigations of the sponge bioherms and limestone sea floor areas off Little Torch Key (Petuch and Sargent, 2012), however, have uncovered the first Fulguropsis known from that area. Closer examination showed that this dwarf busyconid constituted a new subspecies, in many ways more closely resembling Pleistocene fossil species than it does the living F. spiratum pyruloides. The new endemic lower Keys subspecies, Fuluropsis spiratum keysensis, differs from the more northerly pyruloides by being a much smaller, narrower, more cylindrical, and far less inflated shell; in having an elevated, protracted spire, with distinctly stepped and scalariform spire whorls; and in having prominent, very strong lirae within the aperture (pyruloides is always smooth within the aperture and lacks any lirae). In this last character, F. spiratum keysensis is similar to F. spiratum spiratum (Lamarck, 1816) from the Louisiana, Texas, and Mexico coasts. That nominate subspecies, although having strong apertural lirae, has a rounded, inflated body whorl with a flattened spire and more closely resembles the eastern Carolinian subspecies pyruloides. The new Keys subspecies also differs from both spiratum and pyruloides in having a greatly reduced, much shallower, and narrower sutural channel on the spire whorls, a shell character very much in common with the Pleistocene fossil F. spiratum pahayokee Petuch, 1994 from the Everglades area.

Type Locality: Found in a sand pocket on a sponge bioherm, 1.5 m depth off the northeast¬ern end of Little Torch Key, Lower Florida Keys, Monroe County, Florida.