Erinaceus roumanicus Barrett-Hamilton 1900

Erinaceus roumanicus Barrett-Hamilton 1900, Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., ser. 7, 5: 365.

Type Locality: Rumania, Prahova, Gageni.

Vernacular Names: Northern White-Breasted Hedgehog.

Subspecies::

Subspecies Erinaceus roumanicus subsp. roumanicus Barrett-Hamilton 1900

Subspecies Erinaceus roumanicus subsp. bolkayi V. Martino 1930

Subspecies Erinaceus roumanicus subsp. drozdovskii V. and E. Martino 1933

Subspecies Erinaceus roumanicus subsp. nesiotes Bate 1906

Subspecies Erinaceus roumanicus subsp. pallidus Stroganov 1957

Distribution: E Europe from Poland to Austria and Slovenia; the Balkan states, Greek and Adriatic isls including Crete, Corfu, and Rhodes; Turkish Thrace; eastwards through Russsia and Ukraine to N Caucasus, W Siberia and River Ob.

Discussion: Formerly included in europaeus, but see Kratochvíl (1975), Kral (1967), Orlov (1969), Suchentrunk et al. (1998), among others. Subsequently included in concolor, but new genetic (Bannikova et al., 2002; Filippucci and Simson, 1996; Santucci et al., 1998) and morphological data (Kryštufek, 2002 b; Kryštufek and Vohralik, 2001) suggest that concolor and roumanicus are two distinct species with parapatric distributions. Geographic variation of roumanicus was studied by Corbet (1988), Giagia and Ondrias (1980), Doğramaci and Gündüz (1993), Giagia-Athanasopoulou and Markakis (1996), and Kryštufek and Vohralik (2001). Some forms may deserve subspecies status, but the above arrangement is still tentative. The European range of the species is shown under E. concolor in Mitchell-Jones et al. (1999).