Bacteria associated with plant tissues infected by plant-parasitic nematodes from families Anguinidae Nicoll, 1935 and Aphelenchoididae Skarbilovich, 1947

A total of 38 bacterial strains were isolated from 23 samples of plants infected by 17 species of nematodes from the genera Anguina, Heteroanguina, Mesoanguina, Ditylenchus and Aphelenchoides. The 16S rRNA gene-based identification revealed that the strains belonged to 11 genera of the classes Alphaproteobacteria (Sphingomonas, Caulobacter, Rhizobium), Bacilli (Bacillus, Paenibacillus, Lactococcus, Staphylococcus) and Actinobacteria (Rathayibacter, Brachybacterium, Mycolicibacterium, Plantibacter). The isolated strains showed high 16S rRNA gene sequence identity (99.1-100%) to 19 type strains of validly described species, which indicates that they match known species or are closely related novel (not yet validly described) species. Among the species comprising the aforementioned bacterial genera, only several species of Rathayibacter and Sphingomonas are plant pathogens. Some of the known species of Staphylococcus and the other revealed genera that include human pathogens, were reported to show plant growth-promoting properties.