Recent Advancements in Taxonomy of Bacillus-like Bacteria:An Updated Review in 2016

In the paper authored by Liu et al. that entitled, "List of species names for the Bacillus-like bacteria", the Bacillus-like bacteria were collated up to the end of December 2014. It included 71 genera and 752 species with only those contained a suffix "bacillus". This article updated the taxonomic information on the Bacillus-like bacteria to include (1) the species number, changes in systematic status, and new species reported in 2015-2016 on each genus with the suffix "bacillus"; (2) the progress on taxonomy of the spore-forming genera without the suffix "bacillus" in 7 families, and (3) the classification of the non-Bacillus-like genera with a suffix "bacillus". By year-end 2016, at least 8 families were included in the order of Bacillales. They were Bacillaceae (69 genera and 604 species), Alicyclobacillaceae (6 genera and 46 species), Paenibacillaceae (10 genera and 321 species), Pasteuriaceae (1 genera and 4 species), Planococcaceae (15 genera and 49 species), Sporolactobacillaceae (6 genera and 20 species), Thermoactinomycetaceae (17 genera and 36 species), and an unestablished family (1 genus and 2 species). Among them, the species in 13 genera were not endospore-forming bacteria.Therefore the total number of the spore-forming Bacillus-like bacteria reached up to 1 078 species and 112 genera within 8 families.