Pavel Švec, Marc Vancanneyt, Joanna Koort, Sabri M. Naser, Bart Hoste, Elina Vihavainen, Peter Vandamme, Jean Swings, and Johanna Björkroth

The taxonomic position of two bovine strains LMG 13603 and LMG 14595T, assigned to the species Enterococcus raffinosus on the basis of biochemical features, was reinvestigated. Both reference strains and two other isolates, 6/1 (=LMG 22829) originating from charcoal broiled river lamprey and IE38.4 (=LMG 22830) from air of a poultry slaughter by-product processing plant, occupied a clearly separate position by sequence analysis of the house keeping gene phenylalanyl-tRNA synthase alpha- subunit (pheS) compared to the type strain of E. raffinosus and all other described enterococcal species. The 16S rRNA gene sequencing of strains LMG 13603, LMG 14595T, 6/1 (=LMG 22829) and IE38.4 (=LMG 22830) confirmed their phylogenetic position in the Enterococcus avium species group with more than 99 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to most members of the group, including E. raffinosus and revealed Enterococcus pseudoavium as the closest phylogenetic relative (99.8 – 99.9 %). Further phenotypic and genotypic analyses using whole cell protein electrophoresis, (GTG)5-PCR fingerprinting, ribotyping and DNA-DNA hybridization experiments demonstrated that all four strains represent a novel enterococcal species for which the name Enterococcus devriesei sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is LMG 14595T (=CCM 7299T).