Invertebrate Zoology

The primary strengths of the Yale Peabody Museum’s Division of Invertebrate Zoology collections include large holdings of Western Atlantic invertebrates, especially deepwater forms, corals and other reef-dwelling animals from tropical localities, invertebrates from Bermuda, and a worldwide collection of sponges. These holdings include not only recently acquired specimens, but also a strong historical component dating to the late 1800s. The entire collection approaches 300,000 specimen lots, representing approximately 3 million individuals, thousands of which are the type specimens of species new to science. Two notable mergers have greatly contributed to the significance and size of the Division’s invertebrate holdings. The Bingham Oceanographic Collection, a private collection established in 1925 by Harry Payne Bingham, came to Yale in the late 1920s and was administered as an independent unit until 1959, when it was integrated into the Peabody Museum. In 1994 the invertebrate holdings of the George M. Gray Museum, formerly part of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, USA, were incorporated within the Division. This collection of approximately 20,000 lots represents at least 150,000 specimens, primarily from faunal and ecological surveys of the Woods Hole area by the Marine Biological Laboratory’s Systematics Ecology Program in the 1960s.