Acinetobacter pollinis sp. nov., Acinetobacter baretiae sp. nov. and Acinetobacter rathckeae sp. nov., isolated from floral nectar and honey bees

Abstract

A detailed evaluation of eight bacterial isolates from floral nectar and animal visitors to flowers shows evidence that they represent three novel species in the genus <i>Acinetobacter</i>. Phylogenomic analysis shows the closest relatives of these new isolates are <i>Acinetobacter apis</i>, <i>Acinetobacter boissieri</i> and <i>Acinetobacter nectaris</i>, previously described species associated with floral nectar and bees, but high genome-wide sequence divergence defines these isolates as novel species. Pairwise comparisons of the average nucleotide identity of the new isolates compared to known species is extremely low (<83 %), thus confirming that these samples are representative of three novel <i>Acinetobacter</i> species, for which the names <i>Acinetobacter pollinis</i> sp. nov., <i>Acinetobacter baretiae</i> sp. nov. and <i>Acinetobacter rathckeae</i> sp. nov. are proposed. The respective type strains are SCC477^T (=TSD-214^T=LMG 31655^T), B10A^T (=TSD-213^T=LMG 31702^T) and EC24^T (=TSD-215^T=LMG 31703^T=DSM 111781^T).