Proposal That Flavobacterium breve Be Substituted as the Type Species of the Genus in Place of Flavobacterium aquatile and Emended Description of the Genus Flavobacterium: Status of the Named Species of Flavobacterium * Request for an Opinion

Cutting a Gordian Knot: Emended Classification and Description of the Genus Flavobacterium, Emended Description of the Family Flavobacteriaceae, and Proposal of Flavobacterium hydatis nom. nov. (Basonym, Cytophaga aquatilis Strohl and Tait 1978)

“…'' Gliding motility was observed in the type and only strain of Flavohacteriurn aquatile under certain conditions (39). I The presence of the flexirubin type of pigments was revealed by a distinct, reversible color shift of the colonies when they were flooded with a 20% (wt/vol) KOH aqueous solution (28).…”

“…This species is represented by a single strain, which is not the strain that was described originally, and several studies have demonstrated that Flavobacterium aquatile is indeed more closely related to certain Cytophaga species than to other Flavobacterium species; Flavobacterium aquatile exhibits swarming and gliding motility under certain conditions, and the structure of its cell wall is similar to that of [Cytophaga] johnsonae (29) (brackets indicate generically misclassified bacteria). As Flavobacterium aquatile was not considered representative of the genus, Holmes and Owen requested that this name be rejected as a nomen dubium and the species be replaced with Flavobacterium breve as the type species of the genus (39). Because this request was denied by the Judicial Commission (96), Flavobacterium aquatile must be retained as the type species.…”

Numerical Taxonomy of Moderately Halophilic Gram-negative Bacteria from Hypersaline Soils

“…Among the marine bacteria belonging to the genus Flavobacterium and included in the Approved Lists of Bacterial Names (Skerman et al, 1980), F. oceanosedimentum is the only one that resembles the strains that appear in this study, and it differs from them only by the production of acids from some sugars, the ability to reduce nitrates, and salt response ; the G + C content of F. oceanosedimentum is also very similar (67.5 mol%) to that of the strains in phenons A, B and C . Holmes & Owen (1979 have proposed a redefinition of the genus Flavobacterium, restricting this genus to the species with low G + C content (31-40 mol %).…”

Survival of freeze-dried bacteria

“…Table 9). with their physiological characteristics (Holmes et al, 1984;Holt et al, 1994). Survival of C. meningosepticum was very stable during storage, whereas the survival rates of C. balustinum and F. aquatile were much less so (Fig.…”

“…Neither C. meningosepticum nor C. balustinum has the ability to hydrolyze starch, and the reaction of F. aquatile is not known. Chryseobacterium meningosepticum can hydrolyze ONPG (o-nitrophenyl-b-D-galactopyranoside) and commonly produces b-galactosidase, unlike the other two species (Holmes et al, 1984;Holt et al, 1994). In contrast to C. meningosepticum, however, other ONPG-positive species of the genera Citrobacter, Enterobacter, Escherichia, Klebsiella, and Serratia (Brenner, 1984;Holt et al, 1994) did not show stable survival during storage in this study (data not shown).…”