The type strains of the species Paenibacillus ginsengisoli (KCTC 13931 T ) and Paenibacillus anaericanus (DSM 15890 T ) were compared in order to clarify the taxonomic relationship of the two species. On the basis of 16S rRNA and rpoB gene sequence comparisons, the two strains shared 99.9 and 99.6 % similarity, respectively. The mean DNA-DNA relatedness value was 77 % and the genomic DNA G+C contents were 43.2 and 42.2 mol%, respectively. Phenotypic data, including fatty acid patterns and acid-production, enzyme-activity and substrate-utilization profiles, showed no pronounced differences between the type strains of the two species. These genotypic and phenotypic data suggest that the two taxa constitute a single species. According to Rules 38 and 42 of the Bacteriological Code, they should be united under the name Paenibacillus anaericanus, with the name Paenibacillus ginsengisoli as a later heterotypic synonym.The genus Paenibacillus, type genus of the family Paenibacillaceae (De Vos et al., 2010), accommodates facultatively anaerobic or strictly aerobic, rod-shaped bacteria that have ellipsoidal spores in swollen sporangia, anteiso-C 15 : 0 as the major fatty acid and DNA G+C contents ranging from 36 to 59 mol% (Ash et al., 1993;Shida et al., 1997;De Vos et al., 2009). Paenibacilli are ubiquitous in nature, especially in soil. At the time of writing, the genus Paenibacillus comprises 114 recognized species, of which nearly 70 have been isolated from soil environments including humus, phyllosphere, rhizosphere, soil and sediments (Daane et al., 2002; Euzéby, 2010). The genus Paenibacillus has remained monophyletic with ever-increasing numbers of species, but some tightly clustered taxa share .99.5 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity, e.g. Paenibacillus favisporus (Velázquez et al., 2004) and Paenibacillus cineris (Logan et al., 2004), Paenibacillus massiliensis and Paenibacillus panacisoli (Ten et al., 2006), and Paenibacillus anaericanus (Horn et al., 2005) and Paenibacillus ginsengisoli (Lee et al., 2007b), which has led to taxonomic re-evaluation. P. ginsengisoli was described by Lee et al. (2007a) for a novel strain isolated from soil of a ginseng field, and its name was validated on Validation List no. 116 (Lee et al., 2007b). According to the original description, whilst P. ginsengisoli formed a tight phylogenetic clade with P. anaericanus due to the high 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity between them, a DNA-DNA relatedness value of 62 % and several phenotypic characteristics distinguished between the two species. However, the DNA-DNA relatedness value was just below the threshold for species delineation (Wayne et al., 1987) and resequencing of the 16S rRNA genes of the type strains of P. anaericanus and P. ginsengisoli revealed that they share 99.9 % sequence similarity, which raised the possibility of their relatedness at the species level. Subsequently, the taxonomic relationship between the two species was re-evaluated by examining a variety of genotypic and phenotypic criteria. T were used for co...