Red Sea to E. Africa, to India and Sri Lanka. The species is now introduced in E. Mediterranean – Israel (1980), Port-Said (1997), Tunisia (2006) – as well as in the Lesser Antilles (Aruba 2020, Curaçao 2022, where it probably arrived as veliger via ballasts of oil tankers from the Persian Gulf; cf. Dekkers & Ros, 2022). New updates record the presence of the species in Guadeloupe island (2023). Lives from intertidal grounds, among rocks, rubble, coral, meadows, down to the lowest infralittoral, depending of the region. Omnivorous.

The mediterranean specimens, and especially those from Tunisia, received the name “micheloi” Chiapponi, 2009. This taxon, which mentions something said to be of a subspecific rank, cannot match any existing group because subspeciation requires hundreds of thousand years, and not only a century.

Above and below: two examples of the white dwarf variant “distinguenda” Schilder, 1927. Usually found between Ethiopia and Suez, especially in southern Red Sea, these shells belong to a lot that was collected in Mediterranean (2008). 2m deep, under rocks, Benghazi area, Libya. 22-23mm.

Calloused, rostrated, pale, with almost no pattern, and smaller than average. Ed Heiman: « Schilder considered that this form can be found in any area inhabited by the species. »