Proposal of Paraglaciecola agarilytica (Yong et al. 2007) Shivaji and Reddy 2014 as a later heterotypic synonym of Paraglaciecola chathamensis (Matsuyama et al. 2006) Shivaji and Reddy 2014 and an emended description of Paraglaciecola chathamensis

In this paper, the comparative genome analysis was used to re-evaluate the taxonomic relationship between <i>Paraglaciecola chathamensis</i> and <i>Paraglaciecola agarilytica</i>. The 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis indicated that <i>P. chathamensis</i> S18K6^T shared the highest sequence identity with <i>P. agarilytica</i> NO2^T (99.9%), <i>Paraglaciecola mesophila</i> KMM 241^T (99.2%) and <i>Paraglaciecola polaris</i> LMG 21857^T (98.5%). Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences and whole-genome sequences showed that <i>P. chathamensis</i> S18K6^T was most closely related to <i>P. agarilytica</i> NO2^T. However, the average nucleotide identity and digital DNA-DNA hybridization values among them were greater than the threshold of 95-96% and 70 % for the delineation of prokaryotic genomic species, confirming that they represented the same species. Besides, phenotypic characteristics and chemotaxonomic properties between <i>P. agarilytica</i> KCTC 12755^T and <i>P. chathamensis</i> JCM 13645^T were almost identical, further verifying this result. Consequently, we propose that <i>P. agarilytica</i> (Yong et al. 2007) Shivaji and Reddy 2014 is a later heterotypic synonym of <i>P. chathamensis</i> (Matsuyama et al. 2006) Shivaji and Reddy 2014.