Pedobacter lignilitoris sp. nov., isolated from wood falls.

A Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, non-motile and rod-shaped bacterial strain, designated W-WS13T, was isolated from wood falls collected around Wando, an island in the South Sea of South Korea, and subjected to a polyphasic taxonomic study. Strain W-WS13T grew optimally at 30 °C, at pH 7.5 and in the presence of 0.5 % NaCl. A neighbour-joining phylogenetic tree based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain W-WS13T belonged to the genus Pedobacter, clustering robustly with the type strain of Pedobacter arcticus, sharing 95.9 % sequence similarity. Strain W-WS13T exhibited 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity of 90.1–95.6 % to the type strains of the other species of the genus Pedobacter. Strain W-WS13T contained MK-7 as the predominant menaquinone and iso-C15 : 0, summed feature 3 (C16 : 1ω7c and/or C16 : 1ω6c) and iso-C17 : 0 3-OH as the major fatty acids. The major polar lipid detected in strain W-WS13T was phosphatidylethanolamine. The DNA G+C content of strain W-WS13T was 36.9 mol%. Phylogenetic distinctiveness and differential phenotypic properties of strain W-WS13T revealed that the novel strain is separated from recognized species of the genus Pedobacter. On the basis of the data presented, strain W-WS13T is considered to represent a novel species of the genus Pedobacter, for which the name Pedobacter lignilitoris sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is W-WS13T ( = KCTC 42500T = CECT 8725T).