Nemertean collections at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History: type specimens and vouchers for Wesley R. Coe's 1940 publication

The Department of Invertebrate Zoology at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History houses a small collection of nemerteans from the Eastern Pacific Ocean. At present the collection contains approximately 2000 specimen lots stored in alcohol. The historically important elements of the collection were obtained in transfers from the Allan Hancock Foundation of the University of Southern California, the Kerkoff Marine Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology, and the Benthic Invertebrate Museum of Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The specimens in these three collections voucher many of the species treated in Wesley R. Coe's 1940 revision of the nemerteans of the west coast of the Americas. Type specimens were located for 4 of the 5 new species group taxa and for 1 new subspecies group taxon erected in that publication. The Allan Hancock Foundation material utilized by Coe was collected in the 1930's during Pacific expeditions of the RN Velero III. The material assembled by George and Nettle MacGinitie at the Kerkoff lab contained a number of specimens collected during the same time period. The specimens from Coe's material at Scripps Institution of Oceanography were collected by Theodore H. Bullock and students in central California in 1939.