A mesophilic, aerobic, facultatively chemolithoautotrophic bacterium, designated strain EPR70 T , was isolated from hydrothermal fluids from diffuse-flow vents on the East Pacific Rise at 96 509 N 1046 179 W. Cells were Gram-negative rods, approximately 0.8-1.0 mm long and 0.3-0.5 mm wide. Strain EPR70 T grew at 20-40 6C (optimum 30-35 6C), 1-25 % NaCl (optimum 2.5 %) and pH 5.0-7.5 (optimum pH 5.5). The shortest generation time observed for strain EPR70 T was 42 min. Growth occurred under aerobic chemolithoautotrophic conditions in the presence of thiosulfate and CO 2 . Strain EPR70 T grew heterotrophically with acetate or n-alkanes as sole carbon and energy sources, and in complex artificial seawater medium. Nitrate was not used as an electron acceptor. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 64 mol%. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene indicated that this organism is a member of the class Gammaproteobacteria, with Salinisphaera shabanensis E1L3A T as its closest relative (94 % sequence similarity). On the basis of phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA, rbcL and alkB genes and physiological analysis, it is proposed that the organism represents a novel species within the genus Salinisphaera, for which the name Salinisphaera hydrothermalis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is EPR70 T (5DSM 21483 T 5JCM 15514 T ).Deep-sea hydrothermal vents are located in tectonically active areas of the sea floor and release either hightemperature fluids (focused-flow vents) or moderatetemperature fluids (diffuse-flow vents). At deep-sea vents, seawater interacts with volcanic rocks at high temperature and becomes enriched in a variety of reduced chemical species, which represent a constant flux of electron donors for microbial oxidations. In the absence of light, chemosynthetic micro-organisms oxidize these reduced chemical species (predominantly sulfur compounds) and mediate the primary production of organic carbon (Jannasch, 1995;McCollom & Shock, 1997).Typically, representatives of the genera Thiomicrospira and Thiobacillus have been isolated when diffuse-flow hydrothermal fluids were inoculated in culture media for the enrichment of chemosynthetic, aerobic, sulfide-, sulfur-and thiosulfate-oxidizing bacteria (Ruby et al., 1981;Ruby & Jannasch, 1982;Jannasch et al., 1985;Durand et al., 1993;Teske et al., 2000; Takai et al., 2004). Heterotrophic bacteria of the genera Marinobacter, Vibrio, Pseudoalteromonas and Halomonas, among others, have also been isolated routinely The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ accession numbers for the 16S rRNA gene sequences of strains EPR70 T , EPR72 and EPR71 are EU740416-EU740418. The accession numbers for the partial rbcL gene sequences from strains EPR70 T , EPR71 and EPR72 and S. shabanensis DSM 14853 T are EU740422-EU740425 and those for the partial alkB gene sequences of strain EPR70 T , S. shabanensis DSM 14853 T and strain EPR71 are EU740419-EU740421.Graphs showing the effects of temperature, pH and NaCl concentration on growth of strain EPR70 T and neighbour-joining trees based on amino a...