Report of 22 unrecorded bacterial species in Korea belonging to phylum Bacteroidetes, discovered during surveys in 2018

The phylum Bacteroidetes covers phenotypically diverse groups of Gram negative rods that do not form endospores, and currently includes 6 classes, 6 orders, 33 families and 380 genera. Members of Bacteroidetes can be aerobic and anaerobic heterotrophs, hydrogen utilizing chemolithotrophs, or methylotrophs. They can be isolated from diverse habitats including terrestrial and aquatic environments, environments with extreme physicochemical conditions, and animal and plant hosts. During a series of extensive surveys of prokaryotic species diversity in Korea, bacterial strains belonging to Bacteroidetes were isolated from various sources of aquatic and terrestrial environments. A total of 22 isolates were obtained, which represent 22 unrecorded species in Korea belonging to 14 genera of 6 families. Sixteen species among them were assigned to Flavobacteriaceae, two species were to Sphingobacteriaceae, and single species was to each of the families Bacteroidaceae, Balneolaceae, Chitinophagaceae and Cytophagaceae. At genus level, Chryseobacterium (5 species) and Flavobacterium (5 species) were the most abundant genera, and single species were obtained for the genera Bacteroides, Baloneola, Terrimonas, Dyadobacter, Aquimarina, Arenibacter, Gillisia, Gilvibacter, Salinimicrobium, Winogradskyella, Pedobacter and Sphingobacterium. The detailed descriptions of each unrecorded species are provided.