A non-motile, rod-shaped and aerobic marine bacterium, designated strain KYW314 T , was isolated from seawater collected from the South Sea, Republic of Korea. Cells were Gramnegative, catalase-and oxidase-positive and had proteolytic activity. The major fatty acids were iso-C 15 : 0 (17.2 %), C 16 : 0 (11.1 %), iso-C 17 : 0 (10.5 %) and C 18 : 1 v7c (10.0 %). The DNA G+C content was 56.4 mol%. A phylogenetic tree based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that strain KYW314 T formed a lineage within the genus Pseudidiomarina (95.4-97.3 % sequence similarity) and a distinct branch within the clade containing Pseudidiomarina taiwanensis PIT1 T and Pseudidiomarina sediminum c121 T . Phenotypic characteristics could distinguish strain KYW314 T from members of the genus Pseudidiomarina. On the basis of the data presented, strain KYW314 T represents a novel species, for which the name Pseudidiomarina aestuarii sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is KYW314 T (5KCTC 22740 T 5JCM 16344 T ).A study of Alteromonas-like bacteria by Ivanova et al. (2004) resulted in the proposal of the family Idiomarinaceae, on the basis of phylogeny and signature nucleotide positions in the 16S rRNA gene. Members of the family Idiomarinaceae are unique among Alteromonas-like bacteria in possessing a high content of iso-branched fatty acids (Ivanova et al., 2004). The family Idiomarinaceae comprises two recognized genera: Idiomarina (Ivanova et al., 2000) as the type genus and Pseudidiomarina (Jean et al., 2006). Several species of the genus Pseudidiomarina are non-motile, while all species of the genus Idiomarina are motile by means of flagella.At the time of writing, the genus Pseudidiomarina comprises eight species, with Pseudidiomarina taiwanensis as the type species (Jean et al., 2006(Jean et al., , 2009Hu & Li, 2007;Wu et al., 2009). Members of the genus Pseudidiomarina have been isolated from saline habitats with a wide range of salinities such as coastal and oceanic waters, seashore sands, coastal sediment and solar salterns (Jean et al., 2006(Jean et al., , 2009Kwon et al., 2006;Yoon et al., 2007;Hu & Li, 2007;Wu et al., 2009). During a survey of the diversity of heterotrophic marine bacteria, a bacterial strain, KYW314 T , was recovered from seawater samples collected from the shallow coastal region of Gwangyang Bay in the south of the Republic of Korea (34 u 519 N 128 u 479 E) in July 2008. Strain KYW314 T was isolated from seawater using the standard dilution-plating technique. Isolation was achieved using marine agar 2216 (MA; BD) (Yang et al., 2006) at 30 u C for 7 days. The isolate was routinely cultured on MA and maintained at -80 u C as a suspension in marine broth (MB; BD) containing glycerol (20 %, w/v).DNA preparation and PCR amplification and sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene were carried out as described by Chun & Goodfellow (1995). Identification of phylogenetic neighbours and calculation of pairwise 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities were achieved using the EzTaxon server (http:// www.eztaxon.org/; Chun et al., 2007). ...