Lost and found – Fritz Müller´s type material of Glossiphonia verrucata (Fr. Müller, 1844) (Hirudinida, Glossiphoniidae) with notes on the leech fauna of lake Tegel in Berlin (Germany)

By

Jueg, Uwe
Michalik, Peter, 1976-

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2018-11-30

Original Publication

Evolutionary systematics

Volume

2

Series / Issue

Issue: 2

Pages

163--168

Subjects

Freshwater leeches , Glossiphonia , Hirudinida , Lake Tegel , verrucata , ZIMG

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Hamburg Centrum für Naturkunde (CeNak) 2017-

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/evolsyst.2.30793

 

Abstract

In 1844, the famous German biologist Fritz Müller published his dissertation about the leech fauna of lakes in Berlin. This study not only addressed the occurrence of leeches in the different lakes, but also contains the description of a new species -Glossiphoniaverrrucata(Fr. Müller, 1844). Unfortunately, he never mentioned how many specimens he found and where he deposited the material of his dissertation research. Thus, it came as a surprise that the material appeared in the small leech collection of the Zoological Museum of the University of Greifswald. Here, we provide an overview of the material focusing especially on the four syntypes ofG.verrucata. Since this is a rarely found species, we further explored historical material from the type locality, Lake Tegel, held in other museums. Our survey revealed that the material collected by Müller is the only one known to date from the species-rich Lake Tegel, which is inhabited by 14 species of freshwater leeches.