A novel, facultatively anaerobic, Gram-stain-
positive,
motile, endospore-forming
bacterium of the genus Paenibacillus, designated
strain 2.1T, was isolated from a colony of Apis mellifera affected by European foulbrood disease in Switzerland. The
rod-shaped
cells of strain 2.1T were 2.2–6.5 μm long and 0.7–1.1 μm wide. Colonies of strain 2.1T were orange-pigmented
under
oxic growth conditions on solid basal medium at 35–37 °C. Strain 2.1T showed catalase and cytochrome c oxidase activity.
Its polar lipid profile consisted of diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine, aminophospholipid
and phospholipid. The only respiratory quinone was menaquinone 7, and the major cellular fatty acids were anteiso-C
15 : 0,
anteiso-C
17 : 0, iso-C
15 : 0, iso-C
17 : 0 and palmitic acid (C16 : 0), which is consistent with other members of the genus Paenibacillus. The
G+C content of the genomic DNA of strain 2.1T was 53.3 mol%. Phylogenetic analyses based on the 16S rRNA gene sequence
similarity showed that strain 2.1T was closely related to Paenibacillus dendritiformis LMG 21716T (99.7 % similarity) and Paenibacillus
thiaminolyticus DSM 7262T (98.8 %). The whole-genome
average nucleotide identity between strain 2.1T and the type
strains of P. dendritiformis and P. thiaminolyticus was 92 and 91 %, respectively, and thus lower than the 95 % threshold value for
delineation of genomic prokaryotic species. Based on the results of phylogenetic, genomic, phenotypic and chemotaxonomic
analyses we propose the name Paenibacillus melissococcoides sp. nov. for this novel Paenibacillus species. The type strain is 2.1T
(=CCOS 2000T=DSM 113619T=LMG 32539T).