reproductive system of leech
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A leech can reach sexual maturity between 2-4 years depending on how often they eat. They can also mature at differnt times depending how long fertilization took. The number of hapliods depend one what leech it is. There are 3 main types of leeches out of the many which are medicinalis, verbanana, and orientalis. Medicinalis leech have 14 haploid chromosomes while verbanana have 13 haploids and orientalis have 12 haploids. Leeches have both organs; the male organ has 9 pairs of testicles
that can be found on the both sides of the ventral nervous system. But the female organ is different a leech has 2 ovaries and 2 oviducts and surprisingly a uterus. Leeches have rings which are how everything is found. The male pores are located between the rings of 24 and 25 while the female pores can be founded between the 29th and 30th ring. Although a leech has both genital organ can only have one active at a time and because of this they have to find a mating partner. When mating is occurring one leech has to transfer the sperm to the other leech and the leech that didn’t give anything will be where fertilization takes place. A leech could also store the sperm to be used at different times. Fertilization can take up to 9 months because of any delay processes. This can range depending on which type of leech it is. The eggs grow in a cocoon in the
female reproductive system. Inside the cocoon the egg hatches and then the leech eats the cocoon as food. After it finishes it is released to the environment. The amount of eggs in each cocoon can rare on the type of leech it is. Leeches like many R-strategists do not take care of the leeches when they are born.