[1] John Percy Moore[2] chose this species’ epithet ‘catenifera’ after the striking chain-striped pattern on the creature's back (Latin catena = chain).

In 1935, the then curator of the Raffles Museum, Michael Tweedie, collected the type specimen among 23 of its kin on a brown tortoise Manouria emys.

However, one species of Phytobdella (P. lineata) from Papua New Guinea is thought to be zoonotic (i.e. it can transmit diseases to humans).

[3] Some texts on tropical medicine erroneously list P. catenifera among aquatic species occurring in sub-Saharan Africa.

[6] Although findings on Phytobdella have yet to be published, the molecular analysis appears to support earlier studies[7][8] that place all Asian land leeches in the family Haemadipsidae.