Vibrio owensii sp.nov., isolated fromcultured crustaceans in Australia

Two bacterial strains (DY05^T and 47666-1) were isolated in Queensland, Australia, from diseased cultured crustaceans <i>Panulirus ornatus</i> and <i>Penaeus monodon</i>, respectively. On the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequence identity, the strains were shown to belong to the Harveyi clade of the genus <i>Vibrio</i>. Multilocus sequence analysis using five housekeeping genes (<i>rpoA, pyrH, topA, ftsZ</i> and <i>mreB</i>) showed that the strains form a monophyletic group with 94.4% concatenated sequence identity to the closest species. DNA–DNA hybridization experiments showed that strains DY05^T and 47666-1 had 76% DNA similarity to each other, but <70% to their closest neighbours <i>Vibrio harveyi</i> LMG 4044^T (≤55%), <i>Vibrio campbellii</i> LMG 11216^T (≤52%) and <i>Vibrio rotiferianus</i> LMG 21460^T (≤46%). Strains DY05^T and 47666-1 could be differentiated from their relatives on the basis of several phenotypic characteristics. The major fatty acids were C_15:0 iso 2-OH and/or C_16:1ω7, C_16:0, C_18:1ω7 and C_14:0. Based on the polyphasic evidence presented here, it can be concluded that strains DY05^T and 47666-1 belong to the same novel species of the genus <i>Vibrio</i>, for which the name <i>Vibrio owensii</i> sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is DY05^T (=JCM 16517^T=ACM 5300^T).