Morphological evidence and DNA barcoding reveals the presence of widespread leeches Helobdella europaea Kutschera, 1985 and Barbronia weberi (Blanchard, 1897) in the Western Amazon of Peru

Hinojosa E.; Ramírez R. · BioInvasions Records (2026) · DOI: 10.3391/bir.2026.15.2.12

Resumen

Information on widely distributed introduced leech species is still scarce, especially in Neotropics. We record the presence of two species: Helobdella europaea Kutschera, 1985 and Barbronia weberi (Blanchard, 1897) in Peru. Specimens were collected in four districts of the province and department of San Martin, and their COI barcodes were compared to GenBank sequences. There was a congruence between morphological and molecular identification of both species. Helobdella europaea was present at all collected sites and commonly associated with apple snails (Pomacea), while B. weberi was only found in an irrigation canal alongside H. europaea. The twelve COI sequences generated from H. europaea collapsed in two haplotypes (one of them new), while the three COI sequences generated from B. weberi collapsed in one haplotype. The new haplotype of H. europaea varies by one position compared to the most abundant one, being the least evolutionarily distant when compared to other haplotypes. The presence of both H. europaea and B. weberi in Peru is recorded for the first time, increasing our knowledge of the geographical distribution and molecular data for both species in South America. Additionally, molecular evidence so far does not show a significant genetic divergence in H. europaea from Peru, and our data are consistent with the well-established Asian origin of B. weberi. © Hinojosa and Ramírez This is an open access article distributed under terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (Attribut ion 4. 0 International-CC BY 4.0).

Instituciones: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos