leech leech leeches are segmented parasitic or predatory worms that comprise the subclass hirudinea within the phylum annelida. they are closely related to the oligochaetes, which include the earthworm, and like them have soft, muscular segmented bodies that can lengthen and contract. both groups are hermaphrodites and have a clitellum, but leeches typically differ from the oligochaetes in having suckers at both ends and in having ring markings that do not correspond with their internal segmentation. the body is muscular and relatively solid, and the coelom, the spacious body cavity found in other annelids, is reduced to small channels. leechtemporal range: middle permian–recent, putative silurian record hirudo medicinalis sucking blood helobdella sp. scientific classification kingdom: animalia phylum: annelida class: clitellata subclass: hirudinealamarck 1818 the majority of leeches live in freshwater habitats, while some species can be found in terrestrial or marine environments. the best-known species, such as the medicinal leech, hirudo medicinalis, are hematophagous, attaching themselves to a host with a sucker and feeding on blood, having first secreted the peptide hirudin to prevent the blood from clotting. the jaws used to pierce the skin are replaced in other species by a proboscis which is pushed into the skin. a minority of leech species are predatory, mostly preying on small invertebrates. the eggs are enclosed in a cocoon, which in aquatic species is usually attached to an underwater surface; members of one family, glossiphoniidae, exhibit parental care, the eggs being brooded by the parent. in terrestrial species, the cocoon is often concealed under a log, in a crevice or buried in damp soil. almost seven hundred species of leech are currently recognised, of which some hundred are marine, ninety terrestrial and the remainder freshwater. leeches have been used in medicine from ancient times until the 19th century to draw blood from patients. in modern times, leeches find medical use in treatment of joint diseases such as epicondylitis and osteoarthritis, extremity vein diseases, and in microsurgery, while hirudin is used as an anticoagulant drug to treat blood-clotting disorders. the leech appears in the biblical book of proverbs as an archetype of insatiable greed. the term "leech" is used to characterise a person who takes without giving, living at the expense of others. diversity and phylogeny haemadipsa zeylanica, a terrestrial leech placobdelloides siamensis, a parasite of turtles in thailand. the ventral face (right) shows many young leeches. some 680 species of leech have been described, of which around 100 are marine, 480 freshwater and the remainder terrestrial. among euhirudinea, the true leeches, the smallest is about 1 cm (1⁄2 in) long, and the largest is the giant amazonian leech, haementeria ghilianii, which can reach 30 cm (12 in). except for antarctica, leeches are found throughout the world but are at their most abundant in temperate lakes and ponds in the northern hemisphere. the majority of freshwater leeches are found in the shallow, vegetated areas on the edges of ponds, lakes and slow-moving streams; very few species tolerate fast-flowing water. in their preferred habitats, they may occur in very high densities; in a favourable environment with water high in organic pollutants, over 10,000 individuals were recorded per square metre (over 930 per square foot) under rocks in illinois. some species aestivate during droughts, burying themselves in the sediment, and can lose up to 90% of their bodyweight and still survive. among the freshwater leeches are the glossiphoniidae, dorso-ventrally flattened animals mostly parasitic on vertebrates such as turtles, and unique among annelids in both brooding their eggs and carrying their young on the underside of their bodies. the terrestrial haemadipsidae are mostly native to the tropics and subtropics, while the aquatic hirudinidae have a wider global range; both of these feed largely on mammals, including humans. a distinctive family is the piscicolidae, marine or freshwater ectoparasites chiefly of fish, with cylindrical bodies and usually well-marked, bell-shaped, anterior suckers. not all leeches feed on blood; the erpobdelliformes, freshwater or amphibious, are carnivorous and equipped with a relatively large, toothless mouth to ingest insect larvae, molluscs, and other annelid worms, which are swallowed whole. in turn, leeches are prey to fish, birds, and invertebrates. the name for the subclass, hirudinea, comes from the latin hirudo (genitive hirudinis), a leech; the element -bdella found in many leech group names is from the greek βδέλλα bdella, also meaning leech. the name les hirudinées was given by jean-baptiste lamarck in 1818. leeches were traditionally divided into two infraclasses, the acanthobdellidea (primitive leeches) and the euhirudinea (true leeches). the euhirudinea are divided into the proboscis-bearing rhynchobdellida and the rest, including some jawed species, the "arhynchobdellida", without a proboscis. the phylogenetic tree of the leeches and their annelid relatives is based on molecular analysis (2019) of dna sequences. both the former classes "polychaeta" (bristly marine worms) and "oligochaeta" (including the earthworms) are paraphyletic: in each case the complete groups (clades) would include all the other groups shown below them in the tree. the branchiobdellida are sister to the leech clade hirudinida, which approximately corresponds to the traditional subclass hirudinea. the main subdivision of leeches is into the rhynchobdellida and the arhynchobdellida, though the acanthobdella are sister to the clade that contains these two groups. annelida "polychaeta" (exc. "oligochaeta") clitellata "oligochaeta" (exc. lumbriculidae) lumbriculidae (blackworms) branchiobdellida symbionts hirudinida acanthobdella euhirudinea arhynchobdellida erpobdelliformes hirudiniformes rhynchobdellida glossiphoniidae oceanobdelliformes piscicolidae ectoparasitic ozobranchidae parasitic evolution fossil of a possible leech from the waukesha biota, in the silurian of wisconsin the most ancient annelid group consists of the free-living polychaetes that evolved in the cambrian period, being plentiful in the burgess shale about 500 million years ago. oligochaetes evolved from polychaetes and the leeches branched off from the oligochaetes. the oldest leech fossils are from the middle permian period around 266 million years ago. although fossil with external ring markings found from silurian strata in wisconsin is sometimes identified as leech, but assignment of fossil is still putative and contentious. anatomy and physiology leeches show a remarkable similarity to each other in morphology, very different from typical annelids which are cylindrical with a fluid-filled space, the coelom (body cavity). in leeches, most of the coelom is filled with botryoidal tissue, a loose connective tissue composed of clusters of cells of mesodermal origin. the remaining body cavity has been reduced to four slender longitudinal channels. typically, the body is dorso-ventrally flattened and tapers at both ends. longitudinal and circular muscles in the body wall are supplemented by diagonal muscles, giving the leech the ability to adopt a large range of body shapes and show great flexibility. most leeches have a sucker at both the anterior (front) and posterior (back) ends, but some primitive leeches have a single sucker at the back. leech anatomy in cross-section: the body is solid, the coelom (body cavity) reduced to channels, with circular, longitudinal, and transverse muscles making the animal strong and flexible. like other annelids, the leech is a segmented animal, but unlike other annelids, the segmentation is masked by external ring markings (annulations). the number of annulations varies, both between different regions of the body and between species. in one species, the body surface is divided into 102 annuli. all leech species, however, have 32 segments, called somites, (34 if two head segments, which have different organization, are counted). of these segments, the first five are designated as the head and include the anterior brain, several ocelli (eyespots) dorsally and the sucker ventrally. the following 21 mid-body segments each contain a nerve ganglion, and between them contain two reproductive organs, a single female gonopore and nine pairs of testes. the last seven segments contain the posterior brain and are fused to form the animal's tail sucker. the septa that separates the body segments in the majority of annelids have been lost in leeches, except for the primitive genus acanthobdella which still have some septa. the body wall consists of a cuticle, an epidermis and a thick layer of fibrous connective tissue in which are embedded the circular muscles, the diagonal muscles and the powerful longitudinal muscles. there are also dorso-ventral muscles. in leeches the original blood vascular system has been lost and replaced by the modified coelom known as the haemocoelomic system, and the coelomic fluid, called the haemocoelomic fluid, has taken over the role as blood. the haemocoelomic channels run the full length of the body, the two main ones being on either side. part of the lining epithelium consists of chloragogen cells which are used for the storage of nutrients and in excretion. there are 10 to 17 pairs of metanephridia (excretory organs) in the mid-region of the leech. from these, ducts typically lead to a urinary bladder, which empties to the outside at a nephridiopore. reproduction and development further information: leech embryogenesis leeches are hermaphrodites, with the male reproductive organs, the testes, maturing first and the ovaries later. in hirudinids, a pair will line up with the clitellar regions in contact, with the anterior end of one leech pointing towards the posterior end of the other; this results in the male gonopore of one leech being in contact with the female gonopore of the other. the penis passes a spermatophore into the female gonopore and sperm is transferred to, and probably stored in, the vagina. some jawless leeches (rhynchobdellida) and proboscisless leeches (arhynchobdellida) lack a penis, and in these, sperm is passed from one individual to another by hypodermic injection. the leeches intertwine and grasp each other with their suckers. a spermatophore is pushed by one through the integument of the other, usually into the clitellar region. the sperm is liberated and passes to the ovisacs, either through the coelomic channels or interstitially through specialist "target tissue" pathways. some time after copulation, the small, relatively yolkless eggs are laid. in most species, an albumin-filled cocoon is secreted by the clitellum and receives one or more eggs as it passes over the female gonopore. in the case of the north american erpobdella punctata, the clutch size is about five eggs, and some ten cocoons are produced. each cocoon is fixed to a submerged object, or in the case of terrestrial leeches, deposited under a stone or buried in damp soil. the cocoon of hemibdella soleae is attached to a suitable fish host. the glossiphoniids brood their eggs, either by attaching the cocoon to the substrate and covering it with their ventral surface, or by securing the cocoon to their ventral surface, and even carrying the newly hatched young to their first meal. when breeding, most marine leeches leave their hosts and become free-living in estuaries. here they produce their cocoons, after which the adults of most species die. when the eggs hatch, the juveniles seek out potential hosts when these approach the shore. leeches mostly have an annual or biannual life cycle. feeding and digestion about three quarters of leech species are parasites that feed on the blood of a host, while the remainder are predators. leeches either have a pharynx that they can protrude, commonly called a proboscis, or a pharynx that they cannot protrude, which in some groups is armed with jaws. in the proboscisless leeches, the jaws (if any) of arhynchobdellids are at the front of the mouth, and have three blades set at an angle to each other. in feeding, these slice their way through the skin of the host, leaving a y-shaped incision. behind the blades is the mouth, located ventrally at the anterior end of the body. it leads successively into the pharynx, a short oesophagus, a crop (in some species), a stomach and a hindgut, which ends at an anus located just above the posterior sucker. the stomach may be a simple tube, but the crop, when present, is an enlarged part of the midgut with a number of pairs of ceca that store ingested blood. the leech secretes an anticoagulant, hirudin, in its saliva which prevents the blood from clotting before ingestion. a mature medicinal leech may feed only twice a year, taking months to digest a blood meal. leech bites on a cow's udder the bodies of predatory leeches are similar, though instead of a jaw many have a protrusible proboscis, which for most of the time they keep retracted into the mouth. such leeches are often ambush predators that lie in wait until they can strike prey