Miscellanea Zoologica Hungarica 11. 1997 (Budapest, 1997)

Nesemann, H.: Rediscovery of the leech genus Ancyrobdella (Hirudinea, Glossiphoniidae)

MISCELLANEA Tomus 11. ZOOLOGICA 1997 HUNGARICA p. 5-10 Rediscovery of the leech genus Ancyrobdella (Hirudinea, Glossiphoniidae) by H. Nesemann (Received March 14,1997) Abstract: New records of leeches of the genus Ancyrobdella from Honshu and Shikoku in Japan are listed. A. smaragdina n. comb, was mistakenly regarded for a Japanese form of the Glossiphonia paludosa. It is described here and separated from the genus Glossiphonia by the morphology of the proboscis. Key words: Glossiphoniidae, taxonomy, Ancyrobdella smaragdina n. comb. Introduction In 1915 the Indian zoologist Dr. N. Annandale investigated the bottom fauna of the Biwa Lake in Japan. He collected four specimens of the remarkable Ancyrobdella biwae Oka, 1917 from a depth of 80 meter. Since the description of his material by Oka (1917a, b), this genus was never found again and there is neither further material nor additional information in the literature. The leech genus Ancyrobdella was regarded as monotypic by Sods (1969). It was included in the catalogue of the genera and species. Sawyer (1986, Vol. 2: 646-697) did not mention the leech Ancyrobdella biwae in his "Taxonomic synopsis and list of species" of all leeches of the world. This fact may be caused by the unclear systematic position of Ancyrobdella. According to Oka "...this leech is more closely allied to the Glossiphoniids, than to any other.."(1917b: 174). Thus, the information given by Sawyer (1986) is very confusing, based on the lack of any new information about this genus. It was listed as an "obscure Japanese species" (1986, Vol. 2: 446), as "endemic genus and species" (1986, Vol. 2: 737) and finally, this author placed Ancyrobdella biwae into the group of "gen. et sp. inquir." (1986, Vol. 2: 739). In 1994, Kurt. M. Polanec and the author collected new material of Ancyrobdella from several water bodies in Japan. It was possible to find a further (second) common species of this genus, that is incorrectly regarded as the Japanese form of the European Glossiphonia paludosa (Carena, 1824). The present paper is dealing with the systematic position of the so-called "Palaearctic species" in the Asian fauna and the confusion about the use of the taxon name paludosa (Carena, 1824). Until now, there exist several species of at least three different genera (Ancyrobdella Oka, 1917; Batracobdelloides Oosthuizen, 1984; Glossiphonia Johnson, 1816), which were mistakenly regarded as the same species. All of them have two pairs of eyes, seven pairs of crop caeca, greenish colour and neither prominent papillae nor dark pattern. The first results about the European species have already been published by Nesemann & Csányi (1995).