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The Erpobdelliformes are one of the currently-accepted suborders of the proboscisless leeches (Arhynchobdellida). It includes five families: [1] [2] [3] Americobdellidae; Erpobdellidae Blanchard, 1894; Gastrostomobdellidae Richardson, 1971; Orobdellidae Nakano, Ramlah & Hikida, 2012; Salifidae Johansson, 1910
It feeds on insect larvae, fish eggs and fry, tadpoles, worms, other leeches, [4] and gastropods; [7] the prey is sucked in and swallowed whole. The leech sometimes emerges from the water to hunt for earthworms. [4] [7] Like other leeches, Haemopis sanguisuga is a hermaphrodite. The testes mature first and the ovaries later in the organism's life.
Unlike jawed leeches who use rows of teeth to puncture skin, Haementeria ghilianii uses a 10 centimetres (3.9 in) hypodermic needle-like proboscis to feed. Bites are kept open by the fibrinogenolytic (breaks up fibrinogen) enzyme hementin, which is secreted from the proboscis' lumen; secretion is neurologically controlled. Hementin dissolves ...
Most leeches have a sucker at both the anterior (front) and posterior (back) ends, but some primitive leeches have a single sucker at the back. [ 24 ] [ 25 ] Leech anatomy in cross-section: the body is solid, the coelom (body cavity) reduced to channels, with circular, longitudinal, and transverse muscles making the animal strong and flexible.
Leeches were often gathered by leech collectors and were eventually farmed in large numbers. A unique 19th-century "Leech House" survives in Bedale, North Yorkshire on the bank of the Bedale Beck, used to store medicinal leeches until the early 20th century. Manchester Royal Infirmary used 50,000 leeches a year in 1831. The price of leeches ...
The leeches may be panmictic – that is to say, mixing and breeding randomly – across much their range. Some populations in Ontario and New England have refrained from panmixia, and, furthermore, a 2024 paper that studied the leeches' phylogeography concluded that it should not be assumed "that M. decora is truly panmictic" of the study's ...