A low-G+C, Gram-positive isolate, designated strain CVS-8 T , was isolated from a sea salt evaporation pond on the Island of Sal in the Cape Verde Archipelago. This organism was found to be a catalase-and oxidase-positive, non-motile, spore-forming, aerobic, curved rod-shaped organism with an optimum growth temperature of about 35-37 6C and an optimum pH between 7.5 and 8.0. Optimal growth occurred in media containing 4-6 % (w/v) NaCl and no growth occurred in medium without NaCl. The cell-wall

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... peptidoglycan was of the A1c type with meso-diaminopimelic acid, the major respiratory quinone was MK-7, the major fatty acids were iso-15 : 0, 16 : 0, anteiso-15 : 0 and iso-16 : 0 and the major polar lipids were diphosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, phosphatidylethanolamine and an unidentified aminoglycophospholipid. The G+C content of the DNA was 37.9 mol%. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence indicated that strain CVS-8 T represented a novel species of the genus Bacillus, the highest levels of sequence similarity (mean pairwise similarity values of 97.5 %) being found with respect to the type strains of Bacillus shackletonii and Bacillus acidicola. On the basis of the phylogenetic, physiological and biochemical data, strain CVS-8 T represents a novel species of the genus Bacillus, for which the name Bacillus isabeliae sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is CVS-8 T (5LMG 22838 T 5CIP 108578 T ). The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession number for the 16S rRNA gene sequence of strain CVS-8 T is AM503357. A maximum-parsimony phylogenetic dendrogram based on 16S rRNA gene sequences and a graph showing the effect of salt on growth of strain CVS-8