Camden Research Team Names New Species of Leech for South Jersey Family

September 29, 2009

CAMDEN – Beware, New Jerseyans: A rare foot-long terrestrial leech – potentially the longest of its kind in North America – has been living undetected for centuries right here in the Garden State.

Most folks might be inclined to squash their stealthy neighbor. Not the Otts of Alloway. When Mr. Ott nearly mowed over this gargantuan creepy crawly six years ago, Mrs. Ott didn’t shudder at all. She brought the creature inside, patiently figured out what it needed to eat (worms), and swiftly located the right person to identify the specimen: Rutgers–Camden leech specialist Dan Shain.

Because the rare find now has a proper home at Rutgers-Camden, it has an official name: Haemopis ottorum.

In a recent edition of the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, Shain, an associate professor of biology at Rutgers–Camden, with then-graduate student Beth Wirchansky, detail the geographical journey of this newly reported specimen, the third known terrestrial leech in North America. Shain, who has been featured on the Discovery Channel and funded by NASA, has travelled the globe looking for all living relatives of the leech. Little did he know this species was just 20 miles from his home in Pennsville, Salem County.

Carol Ott emailed an incredulous Shain describing what she had found: “As soon as I saw it I thought it was a leech, because of the way it would scrunch up like a slinky,” she says. “But I never saw anything like it before.”

Before Haemopis ottorum could be officially recognized by the scientific community though, Shain, with Wirchansky and a team of researchers, had to identify more samples and properly notate the differences with other known terrestrial leeches. They do have reproductive organs of both sexes and could self-fertilize to create offspring, but unfortunately this process has never been observed in the lab for these particular leeches. Looking for all of these specimens though, also took time, and patience.

“It was by far the hardest to find,” says Wirchansky, who worked in the field studying threatened swift fox species in Utah; how roadways impact whitetail deer populations in South Carolina; and a plague affecting prairie dogs in Wyoming.

“We found about one leech for every 60 days we spent looking for them,” adds the Rutgers–Camden alumna, who now works for the Institute for Personalized Medicine at Fox Chase Cancer Center. It took approximately three years to find all of the specimens needed.

While New Jersey’s habitat can be ideal for Haemopis ottorum, which can be found under swampy logs, in soggy leaves, or in cedar bogs, there is a limited field season. Researchers had just five months to find specimens that in the cold go undetectable in inches of mud for months.

“The times we were most successful was when there was a nice steady drizzle in the middle of the woods,” adds Wirchansky, who earned her master’s degree in biology from Rutgers-Camden in 2009. “Carol’s home is actually the exception to where we typically found them.”

According to Shain, this new terrestrial leech originated from aquatic leeches in the Great Lakes millions of years ago.

“As a consequence of glacial ice moving down it forced leeches out of water and onto land,” notes Shain of the leech’s likely geological journey from the Midwest, down south, past the Appalachians, and up the coast into New Jersey.

Once the group located more samples of Haemopis ottorum, with help from community members motivated by a $20 bounty, Shain and his team then traveled to North Carolina to find samples of its closest living relative – Haemopis septagon - for necessary molecular comparisons.

Documented in the 1960s, there haven’t been any living samples of this species reported in decades. Preliminary molecular and morphological analyses confirm that the team did find this second species.

You can see for yourself the differences between the three North American terrestrial leeches, currently on view in the Science Building lobby at Rutgers–Camden. While this display could be of interest for those looking for a fright this Halloween season, Shain is quick to point out the playfulness of the creatures – all are housed with marbles they use for recreation. And despite popular opinion, most known leeches aren’t even bloodsuckers.

“They’d make far better pets than hermit crabs,” says Shain, who thinks Haemopis ottorum would be a great state annelid.

The leech’s namesake plans on a future visit to the Rutgers–Camden display and maintains her original reaction when finding it years ago. Notes Carol Ott, “This is a living creature. It’s here for a purpose and I want to find out more about it.”

Shain is currently in California on an expedition to find the earliest living relative of aquatic worms that secrete tubes, similar to leech cocoons. At some point in time worms started making cocoons and his research seeks to determine what would have caused this phenomenon.

Watch Shain with the New Jersey leech in this video.