Trachellobdella, Diesing, 1850

Ahmed, Raja Ben, Romdhane, Yasmina & Tekaya, Saïda, 2015, Checklist and Distribution of Marine and freshwater leeches (Annelida, Clitellata, Hirudinea) in Tunisia with identification key, Ecologica Montenegrina 2 (1), pp. 3-19 : 9

Trachellobdella lubrica (Grube 1840)

( Fig. 3B)

Diagnosis: The maximum length is 3 cm. The body has obvious paired pulsatile vesicles. The colour of living specimens is yellow­orange. The oral sucker has one pair of eyes. The posterior sucker is very small and is without ocelli. The male and female gonopores are separated by one annulus. This parasitic species was found in the gill cavity of teleosts.

Habitat: This leech lives exclusively in the gill chambers of a variety of teleost fish in warm temperate and tropical seas worldwide. The mature leeches leave the fish to lay eggs, after which they die ( Sawyer 1986; Williams et al. 1994).

Distribution: Trachellobdella lubrica has been reported on marine fishes from the Mediterranean, west coast of Africa, Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, South Carolina and near the Hawaiian Islands ( Sawyer 1986).

In Tunisia ( Fig. 5F), the species was collected from the fish Symphodus tinca (Linnaeus 1758) in the lagoon of Bizerte.