Numerical Taxonomy of Moderately Halophilic Gram-negative Rods from an Inland Saltern

SUMMARY: A total of 174 moderately halophilic bacteria was isolated from an inland saltern with athalassohaline characteristics, located in La Mala, Granada, Spain. The results of 118 phenotypic tests were submitted to a numerical analysis with ten reference strains using simple matching (SSM ) and Jaccard (SJ ) coefficients. Clustering was done by the unweighted pair-group method of association (UPGMA), single linkage and complete linkage analysis. Five phenons were found at the 67% similarity level (SSM ). Phenon A included 74 strains assigned to Vibrio; 22 bacteria belonging to phenon B were assigned to the genus Alteromonas; strains of phenon C were assigned to Deleya (43 strains) and Acinetobacter (7 strains); phenon D resembled Pseudomonas (13 strains); phenon E could be related to Flavobacterium oceanosedimentum (9 strains).