Isolation of Hymenobacter weizhouensis sp. nov. and Hymenobacter latericus sp. nov., two novel species belonging to the genus Hymenobacter, from the soil of Weizhou Island

Two bacterial strains, YIM 151858-1 T and YIM 151500-1 T , were isolated from soil samples collected on Weizhou Island, Beibu Gulf, South China Sea, China. Both strains were aerobic, Gram-negative, non-flagellated and rod-shaped bacteria. Phylogenetic analyses based on the 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that both strains belonged to the genus Hymenobacter of the family Hymenobacteraceae . Strains YIM 151858-1 T and YIM 151500-1 T exhibited 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities of 96.04% and 95.29% to Hymenobacter deserti and Hymenobacter rubripertinctus , respectively. In strain YIM 151858-1 T , the major cellular fatty acids (>10%) were iso-C 15 : 0 , summed feature 4 (iso-C 17 : 1 I and/or anteiso-C 17 : 1 B) and iso-C 17 : 0 3-OH, whereas the detected polar lipids included phosphatidylethanolamine (PE), unidentified aminophospholipids (APL), unidentified phospholipids and unidentified lipid (L). In strain YIM 151500-1 T , the major cellular fatty acids (>10%) were iso-C 15 : 0 , summed feature 4 (iso-C 17 : 1 I and/or anteiso-C 17 : 1 B) and anteiso-C 15 : 0 . The detected polar lipids included unidentified aminolipids, PE, APL and L. The predominant isoprenoid quinone in both strains was MK-7. Based on their genome sequences, the G+C content of both strains YIM 151858-1 T and YIM 151500-1 T was 61.5 mol%. Compared with the most closely related species H. deserti ZLB-3 T and H. rubripertinctus KCTC 62163 T , the strains YIM 151858-1 T and YIM 151500-1 T had 75.4% average nucleotide identity, 68.8% average amino acid identity and 21% digital DNA–DNA hybridization value average, which were below the thresholds for delineation of the two novel species. Based on the results of the polyphasic taxonomy, we propose that strains YIM 151858-1 T and YIM151500-1 T represent novel species, for which we propose the names Hymenobacter latericus sp. nov. (type strain YIM 151858-1 T =MCCC 1K8320=KCTC 92732) and Hymenobacter weizhouensis sp. nov. (type strain YIM 151500-1 T =MCCC 1K08054=KCTC 92531) within the genus Hymenobacter .