sp. nov., sp. nov., sp. nov. and sp. nov., isolated from paper mulberry in Taiwan.

Five Gram-stain-positive strains (M1-10, M1-13, M1-21, M2-14 and S1-1) were isolated from paper mulberry () in Taiwan. Cells were rod-shaped, non-motile, non-haemolytic, asporogenous, facultatively anaerobic, heterofermentative, and did not exhibit catalase and oxidase activities. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequences revealed that these novel strains belonged to the genus . On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities, the type strains of and were the closest neighbours to strains M1-10, M1-13, M1-21, M2-14 and S1-1. Sequence analyses of concatenated two partial housekeeping genes, the RNA polymerase beta subunit () and recombinase A () also indicated that the novel strains belonged to the genus . The 16S rRNA and concatenated and gene sequence similarities between strains M1-10 and M1-13 were 100 %, respectively. The average nucleotide identity values of M1-10, M1-21, M2-14 and S1-1 with and were 75.1-78.9% and 76.5-77.5 %, respectively. The digital DNA-DNA hybridization values were 19.7-21.5% and 19.6-20.4 %, respectively. Phenotypic and genotypic test results demonstrated that these strains represent four novel species of the genus , for which the names sp. nov., sp. nov., sp. nov. and sp. nov. are proposed with the type strains M1-10 (=BCRC 81237=NBRC 114433), M1-21 (=BCRC 81239=NBRC 114435), M2-14 (=BCRC 81240=NBRC 114436) and S1-1 (=BCRC 81241=NBRC 114437), respectively.