Graham Thompson

A Gram-negative, motile, rod-shaped bacterial strain, CA-0114 T , was isolated from the midgut of a western honey bee, Apis mellifera . The isolate exhibited ≤96.43 % 16S rRNA gene sequence identity (1540 bp) to members of the families Enterobacteriaceae and Erwiniaceae . Phylogenetic trees based on genome blast distance phylogeny and concatenated protein sequences encoded by conserved genes atpD , fusA, gyrB , infB , leuS , pyrG and rpoB separated the isolate from other genera forming a distinct lineage in the Enterobacteriaceae . In both trees, the closest relatives were Tenebrionicola larvae YMB-R21 T and Tenebrionibacter intestinalis BIT-L3 T , which were isolated previously from Tenebrio molitor L., a plastic-eating mealworm. Digital DNA–DNA hybridization, orthologous average nucleotide identity and average amino acid identity values between strain CA-0114 T and the closest related members within the Enterobacteriaceae were ≤23.1, 75.45 and 76.04 %, respectively. The complete genome of strain CA-0114 T was 4 451669 bp with a G+C content of 52.12 mol%. Notably, the apparent inability of strain CA-0114 T to ferment d -glucose, inositol and l -rhamnose in the API 20E system is unique among closely related members of the Enterobacteriaceae . Based on the results obtained through genotypic and phenotypic analysis, we propose that strain CA-0114 T represents a novel species and genus within the family Enterobacteriaceae , for which we propose the name Apirhabdus apintestini gen. nov., sp. nov. (type strain CA-0114 T =ATCC TSD-396 T =DSM 116385 T ).