Two hedgehogs, one climate frontier: the Djerba mystery
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In Tunisia, two hedgehogs look alike from afar but come from very different worlds. The North African hedgehog (Atelerix algirus) tolerates nearly every climate in the country except true desert. The Desert hedgehog (Paraechinus aethiopicus) has specialised instead in arid and desert environments.
Publicité
Publicité
You might assume they keep their distance. Yet a field study conducted in Tunisia between 2015 and 2018, based on 168 observations, found that the two species genuinely overlap in a transition zone between arid and desert climates. Even more striking, both species coexist on the island of Djerba.
So how do you tell them apart? Forget ear size, often mentioned but misleading, since it overlaps between the two species. The reliable clue is the face: white in the North African hedgehog, dark-masked in the Desert hedgehog.
On Djerba, a local form has even been described, though its taxonomic status remains debated pending genetic confirmation.
