A Gram-negative, facultatively anaerobic, moderately halophilic bacterium, strain ND1-1 T , was isolated from fermented fish (pla-ra) in Thailand. The cells were curved rods, motile and nonendospore-forming. The novel strain grew optimally at 37 6C, at pH 8 and in the presence of 9"10 % (w/v) NaCl. The predominant respiratory lipoquinone was Q-8. The major cellular fatty acids were C 16 : 0 and C 12 : 0 . Polar lipid analysis revealed the presence of phosphatidylethanolamine, phosphatidylglycerol and diphosphatidylglycerol. The DNA G+C content was 49.0 mol%. Comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses indicated that strain ND1-1 T was closely related to Salinivibrio costicola, which comprises three subspecies, and Salinivibrio proteolyticus with gene sequence similarities of 98.3-98.6 %. Strain ND1-1 T showed low levels of DNA-DNA relatedness with S. costicola subsp. costicola JCM 15095 T (33.2 %), S. costicola subsp. alcaliphilus DSM 16359 T (38.4 %), S. costicola subsp. vallismortis JCM 15096 T (59.7 %), and S. proteolyticus AF-2004 T (42.1 %). On the basis of the physiological and biochemical characteristics and the molecular data presented, strain ND1-1 T should be classified as a novel species of the genus Salinivibrio for which the name Salinivibrio siamensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is ND1-1 T (5JCM 14472 T 5PCU 301 T 5TISTR 1810 T ).The genus Salinivibrio is included in the family Vibrionaceae, belonging to the class Gammaproteobacteria of the phylum Proteobacteria. This genus was created for Vibrio costicola based on the significant phenotypic and genotypic differences between this species and other species of the genus Vibrio (Mellado et al., 1996). At present, the genus comprises two species, Salinivibrio costicola subsp. costicola (Smith, 1938;Garcia et al., 1987), S. costicola subsp. vallismortis (Huang et al., 2000), S. costicola subsp. alcaliphilus (Romano et al., 2005) and Salinivibrio proteolyticus (Amoozegar et al., 2008). Members of the genus Salinivibrio are moderately halophilic bacteria which are distributed in salted meats, brines and hypersaline environments and grow in the presence of 0-20 % NaCl. During our investigation into halophilic bacteria in fermented fish in Thailand, strains of Lentibacillus juripiscarius and Lentibacillus halophilus from fish sauce (Namwong et al., 2005; Tanasupawat et al., 2006), Lentibacillus kapialis from fermented shrimp paste (Pakdeeto et al., 2007) and Piscibacillus salipiscarius from fermented fish (Tanasupawat et al., 2007) have been reported. In this paper, a Salinivibrio-like, moderately halophilic bacterium, strain ND1-1 T , isolated from fermented fish (pla-ra), is described based on phenotypic, chemotaxonomic and genotypic characteristics, including DNA-DNA relatedness and 16S rRNA gene sequence analyses.Strain ND1-1 T was isolated from a fermented fish product, pla-ra, which was collected from a market in Nakornnayok province, Thailand. Pla-ra contains 7.8-17.9 % NaCl (w/v) and has a pH of 4.3-6.2 (Phithakpol et al., 1995). The Abbr...