- Volume 72, Issue 7, 2022

Establishing a solid taxonomic framework is crucial for enabling discovery and documentation efforts. This ensures effective communication between scientists as well as reproducibility of results between laboratories, and facilitates the exchange and preservation of biological material. Such framework can only be achieved by establishing clear criteria for taxa characterization and rank assignment. Within the anaerobic fungi (phylum Neocallimastigomycota), the need for such criteria is especially vital. Difficulties associated with their isolation, maintenance and long-term storage often result in limited availability and loss of previously described taxa. To this end, we provide here a list of morphological, microscopic, phylogenetic and phenotypic criteria for assessment and documentation when characterizing newly obtained Neocallimastigomycota isolates. We also recommend a polyphasic rank-assignment scheme for novel genus-, species- and strain-level designations for newly obtained Neocallimastigomycota isolates.

A corrigendum of this article has been published full details can be found at https://doi.org/10.1099/ijsem.0.006780.

A rod-shaped, Gram-stain-negative, non-motile and aerobic bacterium, designated Q8-18T, was isolated from soil of glacier foreland in Austre Lovénbreen, Arctic, and subjected to a polyphasic taxonomic study. Strain Q8-18T grew optimally at 20 °C, pH 5.0–8.0 and in the presence of 0–1.0 % (w/v) NaCl. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that strain Q8-18T belonged to the family Sphingobacteriaceae. Strain Q8-18T showed the highest sequence similarity to Pedobacter mendelii CCM 8685T (96.8%), Pedobacter lithocola CCM 8691T (96.8%), Pedobacter roseus CL-GP80T (96.7%), Pedobacter changchengzhani E01020T (96.7%), Pedobacter alluvionis DSM 19624T (96.6%), Pedobacter jejuensis THG-DR3T (96.3%), Pedobacter ginsengiterrae DCY49T (95.9%) and Pedobacter jamesrossensis CCM 8689T (95.9%). A whole genome-level comparison of strain Q8-18T with P. roseus CL-GP80T, P. changchengzhani E01020T, P. alluvionis DSM 19624T and Pedobacter heparinus LMG 10339T revealed average nucleotide identity values of 77.0, 76.0, 77.0 and 70.4%, respectively. The only respiratory isoprenoid quinone was menaquinone-7. The polar lipid profile of strain Q8-18T was found to contain one phosphatidylethanolamine, eight unidentified aminolipids, one aminophospholipids and five unidentified lipids. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was determined to be 35.4 mol%. The main fatty acids were summed feature 3 (comprising C16 : 1  ω7c and/or C16 : 1  ω6c), iso-C15 : 0 and anteiso-C15 : 0. On the basis of the evidence presented in this study, a novel species of the genus Pedobacter, Pedobacter mucosus sp. nov., is proposed, with the type strain Q8-18T (=CCTCC AB 2020009T=KCTC 82636T).