Genus Schmidtea Ball, 1974

The genus Schmidtea comprises only four species viz. S. lugubris (Schmidt, 1861), S. polychroa (Schmidt, 1861), S. nova Benazzi & Puccinelli, 1973, and S. mediterranea Benazzi, Baguña, Ballester, Puccinelli & Del Papa, 1975 . All of these species are distinguishable on the basis of karyological and morphological characteristics, while they reproduce sexually by amphimixis or gynogenesis, except S. mediterranea, which shows both sexual and asexual reproduction modes (Benazzi et al., 1975; Benazzi & Benazzi Lentati, 1976; Lazaro et al., 2011).