The medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis) – its distribution in Central Europe and searching for causes of its status as critically endangered species in the Czech Republic
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| Year of publication | 2011 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | Hirudo medicinalis is a critically endangered species in the Czech Republic. It feeds on blood of vertebrates and lives especially in small water bodies in lowlands. Because of leeches picking of for bloodletting during past centuries, the number of localities decreased dramatically. At present medicinal leeches are threatened by habitat destruction. To get a general view of occurrence and biotope preferences of this species, we resumed the published Central European data and our field data. In Austria there are only old insufficient information about 2 localities, 6 localities were found in Slovakia and 29 localities in the north-eastern Germany. In Poland 87 localities were found during the last monitoring and in the Czech Republic we confirmed 13 localities. H. medicinalis prefers living in wetland pools and ponds, it also lives in peat bogs, lakes and dead river arms. The highest biotope diversity was recorded in Poland, where leeches live also in extreme environmental conditions. Although Polish and German localities lie in lower altitudes than the Czech and Slovak ones, they are characterized by lower temperatures. In our territory many wetlands are drying up or they have been devastated by flood-control management. That’s why there is an urgent need to protect recent localities and to control human landscape interventions. |
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