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The Glossiphoniidae, the freshwater jawless leeches, [citation needed] or leaf leeches (due to their shape) [11] are freshwater leeches, flattened, and with a poorly defined anterior sucker. [2] The family Glossiphoniidae contains one of the world's largest species of leech, the giant Amazon leech , which can grow up to 45 cm in length. [ 12 ]
Haemadipsa zeylanica, a terrestrial leech Placobdelloides siamensis, a parasite of turtles in Thailand.The ventral face (right) shows many young leeches. [3]Some 680 species of leech have been described, of which around 100 are marine, 480 freshwater and the remainder terrestrial.
Cystobranchus is also known as a leech, and it is a freshwater leech, usually found in revisers, streams, lakes, and ponds across North America. They often attach themselves on the external part of freshwater fish and feed on their blood.
Glossiphoniidae are a family of freshwater proboscis-bearing leeches. These leeches are generally flattened, and have a poorly defined anterior sucker . Most suck the blood of freshwater vertebrates like amphibians , crocodilians and aquatic turtles , but some feed on invertebrates like oligochaetes and freshwater snails instead.
Some of the leeches in this family have external gills, outgrowths of the body wall projecting laterally, the only group of leeches to exchange gases in this way. [ 3 ] Worldwide, around 60 genera and 100 species of leeches are in this family, all parasitic on the blood of marine, estuarine, and freshwater fishes.
Haementeria ghilianii is a species of leech in the Glossiphoniidae family, comprising freshwater proboscis-bearing leeches. Colloquially, they are known as the Amazon giant leech. Following its initial description in 1849, additional details were provided based on specimens from French Guiana in 1899, after which the species was largely ...
From here it has spread to Australia, Europe and South America. It is a freshwater species. [2] In 2018 it was reported from two widely separated locations in North Carolina, but it is unclear whether these are as a result of two different introductions, or mean that the leech has become widely distributed but has previously been overlooked. [3]
E. octoculata is one of the most common freshwater leeches in Europe with documentation in over 20 countries. [7] [8] This species has been shown to be more abundant in fast moving streams and rivers with rocky bottoms than other leech species. [9] [10] E. octoculata prefers acidic bodies of water with low nutrient content. [10]