Yarrowia divulgata f.a., sp. nov., a yeast species from animal-related and marine sources Five yeast strains, phenotypically indistinguishable from Yarrowia lipolytica and Yarrowia deformans, were recovered from different animal-related samples. One strain was isolated from a bacon processing plant in Denmark, two strains from chicken liver in the USA, one strain from chicken breast in Hungary and one from minced beef in Hungary. Comparisons of the sequences of their large subunit rRNA gene D1/D2 domain and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions revealed that, despite their phenotypic similarity, they represent a novel yeast species of the Yarrowia clade with Y. deformans being the genotypically closest relative (LSU rRNA gene D1/D2 and ITS region similarity of 97.0 and 93.7 %, respectively). Yarrowia divulgata f.a., sp. nov. is proposed to accommodate these strains with F6-17 T (5CBS 11013 T 5CCUG 56725 T ) as the type strain. Some D1/D2 sequences of yeasts from marine habitats were found in the GenBank database that were identical to those of the strains of Y. divulgata f.a., sp. nov. Unfortunately, these strains were not available for our study.Yarrowia lipolytica is a widely reported contaminant of mainly dairy and meat products (Kurtzman, 2011) where it is a common yeast contaminant and spoilage organism (e.g. Ismail et al., 2000; Vasdinyei & Deák, 2003;Mayoral et al., 2005; Deák, 2008). However, in some cases Y. lipolytica also plays a beneficial role in the food industry such as in some fermented sausages (Encinas et al., 2000) and Raclette cheese where it positively influences flavour (Wyder et al., 1999). Furthermore, it is potentially useful for the production of citric acid (Mirbagheri et al., 2012). Groenewald et al. (2013) summarized information on the current and potential industrial applications of Y. lipolytica, as well as information on its safety. Based on their review, they concluded that Y. lipolytica is 'safe-to-use' in feed or food, or when deployed as a production host for biotechnological applications.Y. lipolytica remained the only known member of the genus for a long time. However, based on D1/D2 sequence comparisons (Bigey et al., 2003) and a polyphasic approach (Knutsen et al., 2007) the heterogeneity of the species was recognized and the reinstatement of Candida deformans, one of its synonyms, was proposed. In the last decade, descriptions of numerous novel species belonging to the Yarrowia clade have been enabled by molecular biology methods such as sequence analysis (Péter et al., 2004;Kurtzman, 2005;Knutsen et al., 2007;Limtong et al., 2008;Groenewald & Smith, 2013). At the time of writing, ten recognized species are assigned to the Yarrowia clade (Limtong et al., 2008;Kurtzman, 2011;Lachance et al., 2011;Groenewald & Smith, 2013). In the present paper, we report the isolation of five yeast strains from different animal-related sources. These strains form a group in the Yarrowia clade, characterized by identical D1/D2 and ITS sequences that are sufficiently different from...