Mutually beneficial interactions between microorganisms and animals are a conserved and
ubiquitous feature of biotic systems. In many instances animals, including humans, are …

Gastrointestinal microbiomes play important roles in the health and nutrition of animals and
humans. The medicinal leech, Hirudo verbana, serves as a powerful model for the study of …

Digestive-tract microbiota exert tremendous influence over host health. Host-symbiont model
systems are studied to investigate how symbioses are initiated and maintained, as well as to …

ABSTRACT FDA-approved, postoperative use of leeches can lead to bacterial infections. In
this study, we used culture-dependent and culture-independent approaches to characterize …

Background Leeches have gained a fearsome reputation by feeding externally on blood,
often from human hosts. Orificial hirudiniasis is a condition in which a leech enters a body …

Aeromonas spp. is a pathogenic bacteria that potentially cause infection in farmed fish,
including Catfishes. In the present study, dominant bacteria were isolated from diseased …

There are trillions of microbes found throughout the human body and they exceed the
number of eukaryotic cells by 10-fold. Metagenomic studies have revealed that the majority …

The evolutionary history of leeches is employed as a general framework for understanding
more than merely the systematics of this charismatic group of annelid worms, and serves as …

The use of the medicinal leech (Hirudo medicinalis) in promoting venous drainage in tissues
whose vitality is threatened by venous congestion and obstruction, especially in plastic and …

Indirect methods for conducting faunal inventories present great promise, and genomic
inventories derived from environmental sources (eDNA) are improving. Invertebrate …