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SPECIES Erinaceus europaeus

Author:Linnaeus, 1758.
Citation:Syst. Nat., 10th ed., 1: 52.
Common Name:West European Hedgehog
Type Locality:Sweden, S Gothland Isl.
Distribution:W Europe; Spain to Italy and Istrian Peninsula; north to Poland, Scandinavia and NW European Russia. Islands of Ireland, Britain, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Azores (Mathias et al., 1998), and many smaller islands. European range mapped by Holz and Niethammer (1990:37) and Mitchell-Jones et al. (1999). Introduced to New Zealand, see King (1990).
Status:IUCN – Lower Risk (lc).
Comments:Formerly included amurensis, concolor, and roumanicus, see comments therein. Reviewed by Holz and Niethammer (1990). Subspecific boundaries are unresolved (Corbet, 1988:137) but studies of allozyme variation (Filippucci and Simson, 1996), and of mitochondrial DNA variation (Kretteck et al., 1995, Santucci et al., 1998) indicate a strong east-west geographical partitioning of the European populations, with Spain, France and Great Britain on one side, and Italy, Corsica, Germany and Sweden on the other side. A single sample from Sicily clustered with the western group and obscured the otherwise clear pattern (Santucci et al., 1998). Filippucci and Simson (1996) suggested that E. hispanicus could represent a distinct species, an assumption principally supported by the genetic study of Santucci et al. (1998). However, other than in the case of E. concolor and E. roumanicus, the geographic sampling of the E. europaeus group is still insufficient, the morphological variation has not been assessed yet, and taxonomic problems remain to be solved. Five available names with type localities in Spain, France and the UK must be evaluated before the correct species name can be fixed.
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Synonyms:

    caniceps H. Smith, 1845
    caninus Geoffroy, 1803
    consolei Barrett-Hamilton, 1900
    centralrossicus Ognev, 1926
    echinus Schulze, 1897
    erinaceus (Blumenbach, 1779)
    hispanicus Barrett-Hamilton, 1900
    italicus Barrett-Hamilton, 1900
    meridionalis Altobello, 1920
    occidentalis Barrett-Hamilton, 1900
    suillus Geoffroy, 1803
    typicus Barrett-Hamilton, 1900

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