Gastrostomobdella monticola
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Gastrostomobdella monticola | ||||||||||||
| Moore , 1929 |
Gastrostomobdella monticola is the name of a type of large of terrestrial leeches from the family of Gastrostomobdellidae in the subordination of Schlundegel , the particular earthworms eating.
features
Gastrostomobdella monticola has a cylindrically shaped body that is 7.5 to 10 cm long and 1.0 to 1.2 cm wide. The leech has four pairs of eyes, two pairs of labials and two pairs of buccals. Of the externally not visible segments, 15 segments in the middle section of the animals - from the 9th to the 23rd segment - each have 6 outer rings. The male sexual opening of the hermaphrodite animals is on the border between the 11th and 12th segment, the female between the 12th and 13th segment or a little behind it, so that 6 or 7 outer ringlets are between the two sexual openings. Like other species of the genus Gastrostomobdella , Gastrostomobdella monticola has a conspicuous slit-shaped opening (gastropore) on the abdomen behind the female genital opening - at the border between the 14th and 15th segment - which opens out from the intestinal canal. The long, muscular, straight and tubular pharynx has no stilettos. The leech's skin has fine black spots on a coral-red background.
Distribution, habitat and way of life
Gastrostomobdella monticola lives on the forest floor of the mountain forests in the Malaysian provinces of Sarawak and Sabah on the island of Borneo, among other things on the slopes of the Murud mountains at altitudes of 1,800 to 2,200 meters above sea level and Poi at around 1,700 meters above sea level. It mainly prey on earthworms , which are swallowed with the help of the muscular pharynx.
literature
- John Percy Moore (1929): Leeches from Borneo with descriptions of new species. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 81, pp. 267-295.
- Sybil P. Parker: Synopsis and Classification of Living Organisms , Volume 2. McGraw-Hill, New York 1982. p. 50.
- Roy T. Sawyer, Alan Taylor, Mohd Jaya bin Hj Sahat (1982): The leeches of Brunei (Annelida: Hirudinea), with a checklist and key to the known and expected freshwater, terrestrial and marine leeches of Borneo. Brunei Museum Journal 5 (2), p. 176.