Since I typically follow the taxonomy that is released at the end of each year by the Turtle Taxonomy Working Group (van Dijk, P.P., Iverson, J.B., Shaffer, H.B., Bour, R., and Rhodin, A.G.J.) and had recently had a contact with Anders Rhodin, I asked him for some expanded thoughts on the matter. He forwarded my email to Peter Paul van Dijk who had the following to say. I post it not for arguments sake, but for the sake of education on varying opinions of the matter. His comments follow:
As far as I recall, hercegovinensis had a brief spell of being recognised as a valid subspecies of hermanni in the early 2000s, after which people looked into it further and found that its genetics were not particularly distinctive (Fritz et al 2006), nor did the supposed diagnostic arrangement of bridge scutes stand up to scrutiny (in the sense that known-locality animals did not uniformly show the condition, while some hermanni animals outside the claimed hercegovinensis range did show the scute arrangement [unpublished info from colleagues]). Thus, hercegovinensis is now generally considered to have been based on a slightly aberrant individual, which is nor representative of a distinct form in the Balkans. Regrettably the 'exclusivity' of hercegovinensis fueled a demand for these unusual rare animals, so that animals showing the characters were emphasised as such and traded at a premium (some targeted breeding for the phenotype occurred in Europe at least).
As far as I recall, hercegovinensis had a brief spell of being recognised as a valid subspecies of hermanni in the early 2000s, after which people looked into it further and found that its genetics were not particularly distinctive (Fritz et al 2006), nor did the supposed diagnostic arrangement of bridge scutes stand up to scrutiny (in the sense that known-locality animals did not uniformly show the condition, while some hermanni animals outside the claimed hercegovinensis range did show the scute arrangement [unpublished info from colleagues]). Thus, hercegovinensis is now generally considered to have been based on a slightly aberrant individual, which is nor representative of a distinct form in the Balkans. Regrettably the 'exclusivity' of hercegovinensis fueled a demand for these unusual rare animals, so that animals showing the characters were emphasised as such and traded at a premium (some targeted breeding for the phenotype occurred in Europe at least).