The first data on species diversity of leeches (Hirudinea) in the Irtysh River Basin, East Kazakhstan

Abstract

The Irtysh River is one of the major waterways of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The river originates in the territory of Mongolia and China, flows through the East Kazakhstan and falls into the Ob River in the Western Siberia of Russia. The Kazakhstan section of the river, with length of 1698 km and water resources about 43.8 km³ (Dyusebaeva 2012), is situated on the border of the West Siberian Plain, the Altai Mountains and the Kazakh Uplands. As the river crosses various natural zones, characteristics of its hydrological regime is very diverse. In the south, in the area of Ust-Kamenogorsk, the valley of the Irtysh extends. In the upper reaches up to the city of Semey (formerly Semipalatinsk), the river is surrounded by plain and mountain landscapes. Downstream from Semey, the Irtysh enters the West Siberian Plain and flows to north-west through dry steppes. The riverbed is unstable: sometimes it is very tortuous, sometimes it is broken into branches, and, there are a lot of sand spits. The hydrological level of the Kazakhstan part of the Irtysh River is regulated with the cascade of storage reservoirs near the towns Bukhtarma, Ust-Kamenogorsk and Shulbinsk.

First data on the Hirudinea fauna of lotic ecosystems of the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Area (Russia)

“…This species occurs in Europe from the Netherlands (Haaren et al 2004) in the west to the Voronezh region of Russia in the east (Utevsky et al 2015). It has been recently reported in East Kazakhstan (Kaygorodova & Fedorova, 2016). This study reports the first finding in the north of Western Siberia.…”

“… Erpobdella vilnensis is rather a common leech species that occurs in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe ( Nesemann and Neubert 1999 ). The easternmost distribution records were from Kyrgyzstan ( Jueg et al 2013 ) and eastern Kazakhstan ( Kaygorodova and Fedorova 2016 ).…”

Cryptic taxonomic diversity and high-latitude melanism in the glossiphoniid leech assemblage from the Eurasian Arctic

“…In the Arctic, it was recorded from Iceland, northern Fennoscandia, and the Bolshezemelskaya Tundra, while its reliable occurrences in the Asian part of the Arctic are lacking (see Table 2 and Supplementary Dataset S2 ). It is also common in several regions such as Poland 87 , Ireland, England, and Scotland 88 , France 89 , European Russia 15 , and Kazakhstan 84 , 90 , while its morphology-based occurrences in Canada 43 , 91 , 92 are confirmed on the basis of DNA sequences (see Supplementary Dataset S1 ). Additional sequences are available from several places in European Russia and Montenegro (see Supplementary Dataset S1 ).…”