Belnapia moabensis gen. nov., sp. nov., an alphaproteobacterium from biological soil crusts in the Colorado Plateau, USA

School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Main Campus, Tempe, AZ 85287-4501, USA Correspondence Ferran Garcia-Pichel ferran{at}asu.edu Strain CP2C T was isolated from biological soil crusts in the Colorado Plateau, USA. The isolate was aerobic, facultatively fermentative, Gram-negative, non-motile and red-pigmented (due to the presence of carotenoids), but did not contain bacteriochlorophyll a . The strain tested positive for catalase, oxidase and urease and was negative for lysine and ornithine decarboxylases and arginine dihydrolase. The major fatty acids present were C 18 : 1 7 c and C 16 : 0 . It had a high DNA G+C content of 75 mol%. Comparisons of 16S rRNA gene sequences identified bacteriochlorophyll a -producing strains of Paracraurococcus ruber (94·9 %), Craurococcus roseus (92·2 %) and Roseococcus thiosulfatophilus (92·3 %), as well as non-bacteriochlorophyll a -producing bacteria Muricoccus roseus (94·9 %), Roseomonas gilardii (94·2 %) and Roseomonas mucosa (93·8 %), as the bacteria most closely related to strain CP2C T . Phylogenetically, CP2C T was placed roughly equidistantly from the above organisms. Based on its phylogenetic placement and morphological and physiological characteristics, strain CP2C T is assigned to a new genus in the -1 subgroup of the Proteobacteria , for which the name Belnapia gen. nov. is proposed. Strain CP2C T (=ATCC BAA-1043 T =DSM 16746 T ) is proposed as the type strain of the type species of this genus, with the name Belnapia moabensis gen. nov., sp. nov. Abbreviations: Bchl a , bacteriochlorophyll a ; BSC, biological soil crust; SEM, scanning electron microscopy The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain CP2C T is AJ871428 . A 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity matrix, a comparison of nucleotides in the 16S rRNA gene sequence between Belnapia moabensis and related species and UPGMA and maximum-parsimony phylogenetic trees are available as supplementary material in IJSEM Online.