These Scientists Survey Rainforest Diversity Using Leeches and the Blood They Suck

These Scientists Survey Rainforest Diversity Using Leeches and the Blood They Suck,
September 14, 2015,
By Marissa Fessenden,
Smithsonian.com,

DNA from their host animals can persist in adult leeches for at least four months

For most people, spotting a leech stuck on some body part is not a welcome discovery. But for Thomas Gilbert, a researcher with the Natural History Museum of Denmark, finding a blood-sucking invertebrate attached to an ankle is exactly what he wants. Gilbert and his colleague Mads Bertelsen of the Copenhagen Zoo survey remote jungles for rare creatures by sequencing the DNA found in leech bodies, reports Ed Yong for The Atlantic.