Flaviflexus ciconiae sp. nov., isolated from the faeces of the oriental stork, Ciconia boyciana

A novel Gram-stain-positive, non-motile, non-spore- forming, coccobacillus-shaped, strictly aerobic bacterium, designated strain H23T48^T, was isolated from the faecal sample of an oriental stork collected from the Seoul Grand Park Zoo in Seoul, Republic of Korea. Optimal growth of strain H23T48^T was observed at 30-37 °C, pH 8 and with 3 % (w/v) NaCl. 16S rRNA gene sequence-based phylogenetic analysis revealed that strain H23T48^T was closely related to the genus Flaviflexus, with 97.0 and 96.7 % sequence similarities to Flaviflexus salsibiostraticola EBR4-1-2^T and Flaviflexus huanghaiensis H5^T, respectively. Strain H23T48^T possessed MK-9(H₄) as the major menaquinone and C_{16: 0} (42.4 %), C_{18: 1} ω9c (31.3 %) and C_{14: 0} (17.7 %) as the major cellular fatty acids. The polar lipids included phosphatidylglycerol, two unidentified lipids, six unidentified phospholipids and two unidentified glycophospholipids. The amino acid composition of the cell-wall peptidoglycan was l-alanine, l-lysine, d-glutamic acid, l-aspartic acid and glycine. The genomic G+C content of strain H23T48^T is 59.5 mol% and the average nucleotide identity value between H23T48^T and F. salsibiostraticola KCT C33148^T (=EBR4-1-2^T) is 75.5 %. Based on the obtained data, strain H23T48^T represents a novel species of the genus Flaviflexus, for which the name Flaviflexus ciconiae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is H23T48^T (=KCTC 49253^T=JCM 33282^T).