Description and taxonomic analysis of a tuberculated turtle leech from the Outer Banks, North Carolina, USA, provisionally identified as Placobdella multilineata Moore, 1953 (Hirudinea: Glossiphoniidae).

A tuberculated species of turtle leech is indigenous to the Great Dismal Swamp and environs of northeastern North Carolina, and differs from other known species of Placobdella. This study of hundreds of specimens for more than a decade documents its unexpected taxonomic complexity. In fact, this seemingly innocuous leech undergoes radical transformations in terms of morphology and behaviour, each adapted to a different phase of its life cycle.

Observations on the terrestrial leech Haemopis septagon Sawyer amp; Shelley, 1976 (Annelida: Hirudinea) from the Outer Banks, North Carolina, USA, with a revision of the species.

The terrestrial leech Haemopis septagon Sawyer Shelley, 1976, is indigenous to the Great Dismal Swamp and environs of northeastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia, USA. Ever since its discovery in 1895 at Lake Drummond in the Dismal Swamp, this elusive species has been recognized as taxonomically aberrant. For example, it is the only jawed leech in the United States with seven annuli between gonopores, and the only one with sixteen complete (5-annulate) segments, both highly conserved characters in the Hirudinidae.

Description of the Southern swamp leech Philobdella floridana (Verrill, 1874) (Annelida: Hirudinea) from the Outer Banks, North Carolina, USA, with a revision of the species.

The jawed leech Philobdella floridana (Verrill, 1874) occurs widely in swamps of the southeastern United States. The discovery of a population of P. floridana in Lake Phelps, an isolated lake in the Albemarle Peninsula in the Outer Banks region of North Carolina, is by far the northernmost record for this species.

History of the leech trade in Ireland, 1750-1915: microcosm of a global commodity.

In the nineteenth century the medicinal leech evolved into a lucrative commodity in great demand throughout the western world. In less than a century its trade became big business by any measure, involving tens of millions of animals shipped to every inhabited continent. In this context Ireland is particularly instructive in that it was the first country in Europe to exhaust its supply of native leeches.