ON THE DIVERSITY OF LEECHES ( ANNELIDA : HIRUDINA ) IN THE FRESH WATERS OF KURDISTAN PROVINCE , IRAN

Lotic and lentic environments, including basins, throughout Kurdistan province, Iran, were surveyed for the presence of leeches from June 2009 until June 2010. In view of the geographical location of Iran, a very rich fauna of leeches should be expected. For each of the species collected, the new locality records are given, followed by the global pattern of distribution. In addition, taxonomic notes are provided for some species. In total seven species of leeches were found in this region. All species repeated in the present paper are new and found in the fresh water fauna of Kurdistan, Iran.


INTRODUCTION
Watersheds in Iran belong to at least three different regions.Rivers in northern Iran are inhabited by typical Ponteo-Caspian leech species, the fauna of which is well studied in the neighboring territories (Gussev, 1987;Lukin, 1976).Rivers in central Iran drain their waters into salt lakes and, in addition to the endemic leech species, several species exist in the lotic and lentic environments of these waters.Data on leech fauna from the eastern regions of Iran, which are influenced by the Indian faunal region, have been presented in only 2 papers (Blanchard, 1896) who repeated Hirudo asiatica (R. Blanchard) in Afghanistan on the Persian boundary while Plotnikoff (1907) introduced a species Limnatis turkestanica in Turkistan and eastern Persia.There are approximately 40 species found in the fresh waters of Iran, however limited data are available on the ecology (Gholami, 2005;Nasrabadi et al., 2009;Mirzaie et al., 2008;Grosser and Pesic, 2006;Grosser andPesic, 2008 andJalali et al., 2009).No data are available on the leech fauna in the fresh waters in the Kurdistan province, Iran.This study presents the first survey data on the fresh waters of Kurdistan province of Iran.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Lotic and lentic localities in Kurdistan province, Iran were surveyed for leeches during June 2009 until June 2010.The leeches were collected by hand or with pincers from the underside of roots and stones in the water, as well as on the banks.The collected leeches were first transferred into 10% ethanol, after which they were washed to remove the mucus and preserved in formalin 10%.The material is deposited in the authors' collections.The longitude and latitude of the collection sites were recorded with GPS.
For each of the species collected the new locality records are given followed by the global pattern of distribution.Furthermore, the biodiversity of species found in Kurdistan province at the place where part of the Tigris water system originates is presented.Identification of leech specimens was carried out in accordance with the keys presented by Lukin (1976), Grosser (1987) andTimrm (1999).

DISCUSSION
These new data are based on a rather small collection of leeches, but they provide an interesting insight into the leech fauna of the study area.The Iranian leech fauna belongs to the Palaearctic region and is characterized by the presence of European species (Sawyer, 1986).Most of the species found in Kurdistan province on these expeditions are also recorded in another province of Iran by Grosser andPešić in 2003 and2005 and are also recorded in Europe, but these data are new for Kurdistan province of Iran.
According to Sawyer's statement in 1999 that Helobdella stagnalis has a global distribution, the results of this study also show this species exists in Kurdistan province and has the highest percentage distribution in this region.
Our work on Kurdistan province leeches demonstrates the presence of an interesting fauna, but one that is still incompletely documented.In future, we can expect that faunistic inventories of stagnant and running waters in selected areas all over Iran and the Middle East region will yield a considerable increase in knowledge about the diversity of the leeches and their significance as ecological indicators of water quality.Naturally, such studies should include taxonomical research with the application of molecular genetic techniques.

Table 1 .
Dominance of leeches in material collected during June 2009 until June 2010 in Kurdistan province of Iran.