Further Notes on the Leeches (Piscicolidae) Living on Fresh-Water Fishes of North America

Abstract

This study is based upon the examination of various leech collections, especially Piscicolidae, collected in Lake Erie, Ohio, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Southern Saskatchewan, Tennessee, Alabama, Louisiana and Florida which have yielded species previously unreported from these localities, more or less remote from those previously known, as well as from new hosts. Knowledge of the leeches of North American freshwater fish is so meager that any definite host and distributional record is of importance. It is hoped the article will prove useful to the ichthyologist, the ecologist and the zoologist as an aid in the identification, as based on external morphological characters, of fresh-water fish leeches. For the most part the leeches were obtained during routine autopsies for internal fish parasites or were collected in connection with general faunistic studies. Besides the report of new distributional and host records, the species concepts of Illinobdella richardsoni Meyer, 1940 and I. moorei Meyer, 1940 are emended in order to include some forms found in the study. The ten host-fish families represented comprise twenty-one species, fifteen of which are reported for the first time as hosts. There were eleven Centrarchidae species, two Percidae and one species each of seven other families (Salmonidae, Etheostomidae, Cyprinidae, Esocidae, Coregonidae, Catostomidae, Sciaenidae and Ameiuridae) which served as hosts. Concerning the Parasite-host distribution, Illinobdella moorei showed the widest distribution, occurring on sixteen different piscine host species. I. richardsoni was a poor second, occurring on five different fish species. I. alba third, being found on two. While Piscicola milneri, P. punctata, Piscicolaria reducta, Actinobdella triannulata2 and Placobdella montifera each occurred on only a single different host species of fish. Although previous workers, viz., Johansson (1929) and Meyer (1940) failed to call special attention to this point, they do report numerous different fresh-water fish species serving as hosts for a single species of leech. It is true, of course, that some species of Piscicolidae have been reported from