Description of New and Amended Clades of the Genus Photobacterium.

Phylogenetic relationships between species in the genus have been poorly studied despite pathogenic and ecological relevance of some of its members. This is the first phylogenetic study that includes new species of (validated or not) that have not been included in any of the previously described clades, using 16S rRNA sequences and multilocus sequence analysis (MLSA) in concatenated sequences of , , , and housekeeping genes. Sequence analysis has been implemented using Maximum-parsimony (MP), Neighbour-joining (NJ) and Maximum likelihood (ML) treeing methods and the predicted evolutionary relationship between the clades was established on the basis of bootstrap values of >75% for 16S rRNA sequences and MLSA. We have grouped 22 species of the genus into the following 5 clades: Phosphoreum (comprises , "," , , , "" and ""); clade Profundum (composed of , , , , , , "," and ); clade Damselae (two subspecies of , and ); and two new clades: clade Ganghwense (includes , , , , , and ); and clade Leiognathi (composed by , subsp. and " subsp. "). Two additional clades, Rosenbergii and Swingsii, were formed using a phylogenetic method based on 16S rRNA gene, although they are not confirmed by any MLSA methods. Only could not be included in none of the established clade, constituting an orphan clade.