Fifteen strains of moderately halophilic, Gram-positive cocci were isolated from a traditional fermented shrimp paste ('ka-pi') produced in Thailand. These bacteria were strictly aerobic, non-motile, non-sporulating and catalase-and oxidase-positive. They produced orange pigment and grew in the presence of 1.5-25 % (w/v) NaCl. They grew optimally in 10 % (w/v) NaCl, at pH 8.5 and at 37 6C. The cell-wall peptidoglycan was of L-Lys type. Menaquinone with six isoprene units (MK-6) was a major component. The dominant cellular fatty acids were anteiso-C 15 : 0 and iso-C 15 : 0 . DNA G+C contents were in the range 44.5-47.5 mol%. Comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses indicated that representative strain PN1-2 T was related most closely to Salinicoccus roseus JCM 14630 T , with 97.3 % similarity. The other novel strains were included in the same species based on their levels of DNA-DNA relatedness to strain PN1-2 T (¢76.6 %) but showed low DNA-DNA relatedness to S. roseus JCM 14630 T (21.7 %). On the basis of the phenotypic and molecular data presented, the 15 novel strains are suggested to represent a single novel species of the genus Salinicoccus, for which the name Salinicoccus siamensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is PN1-2 T (5JCM 12822 T 5PCU 242 T 5TISTR 1562 T ).Moderately halophilic Gram-positive cocci have been recognized within several bacterial genera, and include Marinococcus albus, M. halophilus and M. halotolerans (Hao et al., 1984;Li et al., 2005), Salinicoccus roseus, S. hispanicus and S. alkaliphilus (Ventosa et al., , 1992Zhang et al., 2002), Nesterenkonia halobia (Stackebrandt et al., 1995), Halobacillus halophilus (Spring et al., 1996), Tetragenococcus muriaticus (Satomi et al., 1997), and Jeotgalicoccus halotolerans and J. psychrophilus (Yoon et al., 2003). In this study, a novel orange-pigmented species isolated from 'ka-pi' was identified as belonging to the genus Salinicoccus on the basis of phenotypic and chemotaxonomic characterization and 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis.The halophilic bacteria investigated herein were isolated from samples of fermented shrimp paste, 'ka-pi', collected from a market in Nakhonsrithammarat Province in southern Thailand. The cultures were isolated by using the spread-plate technique on agar plates of JCM medium no. 377 (per litre distilled water: 100 g NaCl, 5 g Casamino acids, 5 g yeast extract, 1 g glutamic acid, 2 g KCl, 3 g trisodium citrate, 20 g MgSO 4 . 7H 2 O, 36 mg FeCl 2 . 4H 2 O, 0.36 mg MnCl 2 . 4H 2 O, 20 g agar; pH 7.2) after incubation at 37 u C for 7 days. Liquid cultures were cultivated in Erlenmeyer flasks containing the same medium and incubated on a rotary shaker. All media contained 10 % (w/v) NaCl, except for tests of NaCl tolerance. Cell shape, size and arrangement and colony size were examined by using cells grown on JCM medium no. 377 agar at 37 u C for 5 days. The Hucker-Conn modification was used for Gram staining (Hucker & Conn, 1923). Spore formation was examined with Gram-stained specimens.The GenBank/EMBL/DDBJ access...