Abstract
For many years it had been assumed that the oligochaete collection of Professor Hideji Yamaguchi had been destroyed by a large earthquake in Hokkaido, Japan, in 1968, but the majority of the collection was rediscovered recently. The branchiobdellidan portion of the slide collection has been examined, the specimens identified as far as possible, and the materials deposited in the museum of the Division of Biological Science, Graduate School of Science, Hokkaido University, Japan. All of the species described by Yamaguchi between 1932 and 1940 have been identified, and their collection sites plotted. In addition, specimens were found of species not described until much later, Holtodrilus truncatus (Liang, 1963), Branchiobdella macroperistomium Liu and Zhang, 1983, and B. monodonta Liu and Zhang, 1983. To place the information obtained in this re-examination in context, the literature on East Asian branchiobdellidans is reviewed in detail.
