Barbronia borealis sp. nov., the first salifid leech discovered in Russia, with a global checklist of this genus

Abstract

Freshwater leeches belonging to the family Salifidae (Hirudinea: Erpobdelliformes) are mostly distributed through tropical and subtropical areas of the Old World but a few species occur in warm temperate regions of East Asia. Here, we report on the first record of a salifid leech in Russia. A previously unknown species was discovered from the Razdolnaya (Suifun) River basin in the southern part of the Russian Far East and is described here as Barbronia borealis Bolotov, Eliseeva & Kondakov sp. nov. based on morphological and molecular evidence. An updated checklist of the genus Barbronia Johansson, 1918 with verified information on the type localities, general range, and the presence/absence of the COI barcode data on type specimens or topotypes for each valid species-group taxon is compiled. This genus currently contains eight species. We present a taxonomic reappraisal of the COI sequences of two widespread species – Barbronia weberi (Blanchard, 1897) and B. gwalagwalensis Westergren & Siddall, 2004 – in the Barcoding of Life Database (BOLD IDS) to avoid confusion in identification of these species in the future. Finally, a growing body of B. gwalagwalensis occurrences in East and Southeast Asia (Myanmar, South Korea, and China) indicates that this species is native to Asia and that its locus typicus in South Africa is situated within the non-native part of the range.