Geobacillus debilis sp nov., a novel obligately thermophilic bacterium isolated from a cool soil environment, and reassignment of Bacillus pallidus to Geobacillus pallidus comb. nov.

Several aerobic, motile, rod-shaped, thermophilic, spore-forming Geobacillus bacteria predominantly giving a Gram-positive staining reaction were isolated from a cool soil environment in Northern Ireland and taxonomically investigated. Two isolates, F10 and Tf-T, showed low 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to recognized members of the genus Geobacillus. Phylogenetic tree investigation using neighbour-joining, maximum-likelihood and parsimony methods indicated that strains F10 and Tf-T represent a single novel species, for which the name Geobacillus debilis sp. nov. is proposed, with type strain Tf-T (= DSM 16016(T) =NCIMB 13995(T)) and which belongs to a subgroup of the genus Geobacillus comprising Geobacillus toebii and Geobacillus caldoxylosilyticus. However, G. debilis showed closest affinities to Bacillus pallidus, which we propose should become Geobacillus pallidus comb. nov.