Figure 1.
Mucosally invasive hirudinoid leeches.
Known from a wide variety of anatomical sites including eyes (A) as in this case involving Dinobdella ferox (B), mucosal leech species, as in a case involving Myxobdella annandalei (C), more frequently feed from the nasopharyngeal surfaces of mammals (D).
Figure 2.
Comparative jaw morphology of Tyrannobdella rex.
(A) Stereomicrograph of the single dorsal jaw of T. rex with large teeth. Scale bar is 100 µm. (B) Tyrannobdella rex anterior sucker exhibiting velar mouth and longitudinal slit through which the dorsal jaw protrudes when feeding. Scale bar is 1 mm. (C) Compound micrograph in lateral view of eight large teeth of T. rex. Scale bar is 100 µm. (D) Lateral view of jaw of Limnatis paluda illustrating typical size of hirudinoid teeth. Scale bar is 100 µm.
Figure 3.
Comparative internal and external anatomy of Tyrannobdella rex.
(A) Whole body ventral view illustrating annulation, relative size of the caudal sucker and relative position of gonopores. (B) Eyespot arrangement illustrated dorsally. (C) Male and female median reproductive anatomy.
Figure 4.
Single most parsimonious tree based on combined 18S rDNA, 28s rDNA, 12s rDNA, and COI datasets.
The family Praobdellidae formed a well-supported monophyletic group of leeches that exhibits a predilection for mammalian mucosa. All groups received 100 percent bootstrap support and posterior probabilities of 1.00 except as noted on the tree. Branches are drawn proportional to amount of change.
Table 1.
Genes and primer sequences used in phylogenetic analyses.
Table 2.
Taxa used for the phylogenetic analyses, collection localities, and GenBank accession numbers.