Rossegel
| Rossegel | ||||||||||||
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Limnatis nilotica , sequence of movements. FS Monricelli (1918): Di un caso di parasitissimo accidentale di Limnatis nilotica Savigny nell'uomo. |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Limnatis nilotica | ||||||||||||
| ( Savigny , 1820) |
The Rossegel ( Limnatis nilotica ) is a kind in the fresh water of live leeches from the order of Kieferegel , who as Ectoparasite of amphibians and as a temporary endoparasite in mouths and airways in mammals as well as human blood drawn. It is common in the Mediterranean area .
features
The horse sail becomes about 10 to 15 cm long and 1 to 1.5 cm wide. It has a yellowish-reddish or greenish-blue to brown-black back, on which usually four black, sometimes also a yellow or green longitudinal stripes run in the middle, as well as pale yellow to orange-colored side edges. As a rule, the ventral side is the same color as the back. The rear suction cup is noticeable, but significantly narrower than the widest part of the body.
On each of the three rather small, rounded, soft jaws there are 45 to 60 teeth with a flat top and a rough surface in a row (monostichodont). These can bite through amphibian skin and mucous membranes of mammals, but not their fur or human skin. There are papillae between the teeth, which are probably used to produce saliva. The front lip of the oral suction cup is grooved along the entire length of the abdomen. The intestine has 10 pairs of lobed blind sacs on each side, the last of which (Postcaeca) are very long.
distribution and habitat
The horse sail is widespread in springs, ponds and swamps of the southern Mediterranean area , especially in Syria , Egypt , Libya , Algeria , Andalusia , Sicily , the Balearic Islands and Sardinia . In some areas it is so common that water sources are unsuitable for humans and cattle for drinking and bathing.
nutrition
Limnatis nilotica feeds on the blood of various vertebrates . Amphibians such as frogs are bitten from the outside and parasitized. The skin of mammals is too thick for the jaws of this leech, which is why the very nimble, small and inconspicuous young leeches wait for opportunities for mammals to come to a spring or a water hole to drink and dip their mouth and nose in the water. The leeches often attach themselves to the oral mucosa and the upper respiratory tract in large numbers and sometimes remain in their host for weeks, where they repeatedly drink their fill of blood. Not only domestic animals such as horses , cattle and dogs are attacked , but also people whose nose and mouth are an entrance gate for the young leeches when bathing. If the leeches have grown enough on the host's mucous membranes, they leave him at the next water point.
Life cycle
The Rossegel like all clitellata a hermaphrodite . The mating, in which two leeches mate each other with their penises , takes place on the edge of a body of water. With the help of the clitellum, both partners secrete a cocoon after mating. According to studies on horse sails in springs in Libya (Negm-Eldin, Abdraba and Nenamer 2013), egg cocoons are deposited from May to October with a maximum in May and June, with young animals hatching from May onwards. The highest number of young leeches in the Libyan sources examined are in October and November, while sexually mature leeches are most common in April. Leeches kept in the laboratory can lay their first cocoons on a frog about 30 to 60 days after a blood meal. After mating with each other, each leech lays 3 to 12 cocoons, which are about 1.3 to 1.6 cm long and 0.9 to 1.4 cm wide and each contain 3 to 12 eggs. At temperatures of 15 to 21 ° C, 7 to 21 days after egg laying, about 1.5 cm long young leeches hatch through openings at the two poles of the cocoon, which still have a noticeably wide rear suction cup and no recognizable genitals to be completely in the shape of their parents up to 3 months. The young leeches can reach sexual maturity in a period of 14 to 16 months with a body mass of at least 2 g, but for this they have to suckle at least seven times on a frog or five times in the mouth of a dog. You can usually fast no longer than 30 days, only in exceptional cases up to 120 days. That is why they remain in their host for a long time in nature. The grown-up leeches that have parasitized in the mouth of a mammal leave it to mate and seek the free water.
Systematics
Limnatis nilotica was first described in 1820 by the French zoologist Marie Jules César le Lorgne de Savigny under the name Bdella nilotica "Nile leech". However, the generic name could not be maintained because the name Bdella ( Greek βδέλλα , "leech") was already assigned to a genus of mites . His compatriot Alfred Moquin-Tandon established the genus Limnatis ( Greek λίμνη , "lake") in 1826 and gave the species the name Limnatis nilotica .
The genus Limnatis was placed according to the traditional systematics to the family of the Hirudinidae and also left in the same by Laurence R. Richardson in his revision of the family in 1969, despite doubts about a phylogenetic relationship of Limnatis nilotica with the medical leeches . Molecular genetic studies by Anna J. Phillips and Mark E. Siddall from 2009 indicate, however, that Limnatis nilotica is more closely related to American leeches, including the genera Macrobdella (among the species examined was Macrobdella decora ) and Semiscolex (including Semiscolex similis and Semiscolex intermedius ) is related than to the leeches of the genus Hirudo . Therefore, they initially proposed to place the genus Limnatis in the family Semiscolecidae , similar to the genus Macrobdella . The result of the work of Phillips, Siddall and others (2010) is, however, to place the Macrobdellidae and Praobdellidae families as the closest related groups in addition to the Semiscolecidae family in their previous smaller extent , with Limnatis belonging to the Praobdellidae family.
literature
- Rudolf Leuckart: The parasites of humans and the diseases resulting from them: a handbook and textbook for natural scientists and doctors. First volume, part 2. CF Winter'sche Verlagshandlung, Leipzig 1901. Limnatis nilotica , pp. 874–877.
- David Lawrence Belding: Textbook of Parasitology. Appleton-Century-Crofts, New York 1965. p. 348.
- Willi Büttiker, Friedhelm Krupp: Fauna of Arabia. Pro Entomologia, Naturhistorisches Museum , Basel 1984. pp. 156f.
- Marie Jules César le Lorgne de Savigny: Système des annelides, principalement de celles des côtes de l'Egypte et de la Syrie. L'imprimerie royale, Paris 1820. p. 113.
- Alfred Moquin-Tandon: Monograph de la famille des hirudinées. J.-B. Baillière, Paris 1846. Limnatis , pp. 349-351.
- Laurence R. Richardson (1969): A contribution to the systematics of the hirudinid leeches, with description of new families, genera and species. Acta Zoologica Hungarica 15 (1/2), pp. 97-149, here pp. 173-176, p. 141 .
- Miriam Orevi, Amiram Eldor, Ida Giguzin, Meir Rigbi (2006): Jaw anatomy of the blood ‐ sucking leeches, Hirudinea Limnatis nilotica and Hirudo medicinalis, and its relationship to their feeding habits. Journal of Zoology 250 (1), pp. 121-127.
- Anna J. Phillips, Mark E. Siddall: Poly-paraphyly of Hirudinidae: many lineages of medicinal leeches. In: BMC Evolutionary Biology. Volume 9, October 2009, p. 246, doi : 10.1186 / 1471-2148-9-246 , PMID 19811660 , PMC 2768714 (free full text).
- Anna J. Phillips, Renzo Arauco-Brown, Alejandro Oceguera-Figueroa, Gloria P. Gomez, María Beltrán, Yi-Te Lai, Mark E. Siddall (2010): Tyrannobdella rex n. Gen. N. Sp. and the evolutionary origins of mucosal leech infestations. PLoS One 5 (4), e10057. doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0010057 .
- Mohamed Mohsen Negm-Eldin, Mosa Abdulsalam Abdraba, Hesham Elsanusy Benamer (2013): First record, population ecology and biology of the leech Limnatis nilotica in the Green Mountain, Libya. Travaux de l'Institut Scientifique, Rabat, Série Zoologie 49, pp. 37-42.