A new deep-sea fish leech of the bipolar genus Pterobdellina stat. rev. (Hirudinea: Piscicolidae) parasitic on the Antarctic toothfish Dissostichus mawsoni (Perciformes: Nototheniidae)

New records of leeches of the genus Limnatis (Hirudinea, Praobdellidae) from the South Caucasus and Central Asia: phylogenetic relationships of Eurasian and African populations

“…The mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (CO1) fragment was chosen as a standard animal DNA barcode gene region (Hebert et al, 2003) and amplified using following primers (Folmer et al, 1994): LCO1490, 5′-GGTCAACAAATCATA-AAGATATTGG-3′ (forward) and HCO2198, 5′-TA-AACTTCAGGGTGACCAAAAAATCA-3′ (reverse) by applying 5 cycles of 30 s at 94 ºC, 1 min 30 s at 45 ºC and 1 min at 72 ºC, 35 cycles of 30 s at 94 ºC, 45 s at 51 ºC and 1 min at 72 ºC, and 1 cycle of 5 min at 72 ºC after an initial 3 min denaturation step at 94 ºC. Alternatively, another PCR protocol (Utevsky et al, 2021) was implemented.…”

Not that many leech species after all: Myzobdella lugubris and Myzobdella patzcuarensis (Annelida: Hirudinida) are the same species

“…In the original description of M. reducta (= Piscicolaria reducta ), mid-body somites are reported with three annuli and a total of eleven pairs of nephridiopores along the body, such characters were used to distinguish M. reducta from other species (Meyer, 1940 ); however, this number of annuli per somite might be wrong given that the most common condition for the genus is 14 annuli per complete somite (Moore, 1946 ; Sawyer, 1986 ; Mañé-Garzón & Montero, 1977 ), and common in other Piscicolidae. For example, in Austrobdella , the sister group of Myzobdella (Williams & Burreson, 2006 ; Utevsky et al, 2021 ) has six annuli per somite (Burreson, 1977 ; Curran et al, 2016 ). Body coloration has been suggested as diagnostic character to differentiate between M .…”