Hirudo medicinalis, or the European medicinal leech, is one of several species of leeches used as medicinal leeches.
Haemadipsidae are a family of jawed leeches. They are a monophyletic group of hirudiniform proboscisless leeches. These leeches have five pairs of eyes, with the last two separated by two eyeless segments. The family is monotypic, containing only the subfamily Haemadipsinae, though as the family can apparently be divided into two or three distinct lineages, at least one of the proposed splits, while not a distinct family, might be a valid subfamily.
Aeromonas veronii is a Gram-negative, rod-shaped bacterium found in fresh water and in association with animals. In humans A. veronii can cause diseases ranging from wound infections and diarrhea to sepsis in immunocompromised patients. In leeches, this bacterium is thought to function as a symbiote aiding in the digestion of blood, provision of nutrients, or preventing other bacteria from growing. Humans treated with medicinal leeches after vascular surgery can be at risk for infection from A. veronii and are commonly placed on prophylactic antibiotics. Most commonly ciprofloxacin is used but there have been reports of resistant strains leading to infection.
Euhirudinea, the true leeches, are an infraclass of the Hirudinea.
The Hirudiniformes are one of the currently-accepted suborders of the proboscisless leeches (Arhynchobdellida). Their best-known member is the European medical leech, Hirudo medicinalis, and indeed most of the blood-sucking "worms" as which leeches are generally perceived belong to this group. In general, though some leeches suck blood, many are predators which hunt small invertebrates.
Leeches are segmented parasitic or predatory worms that comprise the subclass Hirudinea within the phylum Annelida. They are closely related to the oligochaetes, which include the earthworm, and like them have soft, muscular segmented bodies that can lengthen and contract. Both groups are hermaphrodites and have a clitellum, but leeches typically differ from the oligochaetes in having suckers at both ends and ring markings that do not correspond with their internal segmentation. The body is muscular and relatively solid; the coelom, the spacious body cavity found in other annelids, is reduced to small channels.
CodonCode Aligner is a commercial application for DNA sequence assembly, sequence alignment, and editing on Mac OS X and Windows.
Erpobdella is a genus of leeches in the family Erpobdellidae. Members of the genus have three or four pairs of eyes, but never have true jaws, and are typically 20–50 millimetres (0.8–2.0 in) long. All members do not feed on blood, but instead are predators of small aquatic invertebrates, which they often swallow whole.
Perna is a genus of mussels, marine bivalve molluscs in the family Mytilidae.
A leech collector, leech gatherer, or leech finder was a person occupied with procuring medicinal leeches, which were in growing demand in 19th-century Europe. Leeches were used in bloodletting but were not easy for medical practitioners to obtain. The collector would sometimes gather the leeches by attracting them to the legs of animals, often old horses. More commonplace was for the collector to use their own legs, gathering the leech after it had finished sucking enough blood. Many in the profession suffered from the effects of the loss of blood and infections spread by the leeches.
Haemopis sanguisuga is a species of freshwater leech in the family Haemopidae. It is commonly called the horse-leech, but that is due to the similarity of its appearance to the leech Limnatis nilotica, which sometimes enters the nasal cavities of livestock. Haemopis sanguisuga does not behave in this way. Another synonym for this leech is Aulastomum gulo.
Hirudo verbana is a species of leech.
Erpobdellidae is a family of leeches. It is one of the four families belonging to the suborder Erpobdelliformes of the proboscisless leeches order, Arhynchobdellida.
Hirudo orientalis is a species of medicinal leech. It has been confused with Hirudo medicinalis, but has recently been recognized as a different species. This Asian species is associated with mountainous areas in the subboreal eremial zone and occurs in Azerbaijan, Iran, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. It occurs also in Georgia, and probably in Armenia.
Erpobdella octoculata is a freshwater leech in the Erpobdellidae family. This species can be found in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East.
Hirudo sulukii is a species of leech that has been found from Kara Lake of Adiyaman, Sülüklü Lake of Gaziantep and Segirkan wetland of Batman in Turkey.
The Piscicolidae are a family of jawless leeches in the order Rhynchobdellida that are parasitic on fish. They occur in both freshwater and seawater, have cylindrical bodies, and typically have a large, bell-shaped, anterior sucker with which they cling to their host. 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.
Niabella drilacis is a Gram-negative and rod-shaped bacterium from the genus of Niabella which has been isolated from a leech from Biebertal in Germany.
Limnatis nilotica is a species of leech in the family Hirudinidae. It is hematophagous, living on the mucous membranes of mammals.
