Paraechinus hypomelas (Brandt 1836)

[Erinaceus] hypomelas Brandt 1836, Bull. Sci. Acad. Imp. Sci. St. Petersbourg, 1: 32.

Type Locality: "Pays de Turcomans", somewhere in S Kazakhstan. See Ognev (1927) for discussion.

Vernacular Names: Brandt's Hedgehog.

Subspecies::

Subspecies Paraechinus hypomelas subsp. hypomelas Brandt 1836

Subspecies Paraechinus hypomelas subsp. blanfordi Anderson 1878

Subspecies Paraechinus hypomelas subsp. eversmanni Ognev 1927

Subspecies Paraechinus hypomelas subsp. sabaeus Thomas 1922

Subspecies Paraechinus hypomelas subsp. seniculus Thomas 1922

Distribution: Arid steppe and desert zones from Iran and Turkmenistan east almost to Tashkent (Uzbekistan), to the Indus River and N Pakistan; isolates in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Yemen and on the islands of Tanb and Kharg in the Persian Gulf.

Conservation: IUCN – Lower Risk (lc) as Hemiechinus hypomelas .

Discussion: Type species of Macroechinus Satunin. Includes eversmanni, sabaeus and seniculus as possible and blanfordi as a distinct subspecies; see Corbet (1988:155). Species reviewed by Nader (1991) and Harrison and Bates (1991). DNA sequence data of animals from Iran diverge strongly from P. aethiopicus (Morshed and Patton, 2002) .