The phylum Mycoplasmatota (Oren and Garrity, 2021) is only composed of the class Mollicutes with its members characterized by the lack of a cell wall, a small cell and genome size, and a low genomic G+C content. Within the class Mollicutes the genus Mycoplasma (family Mycoplasmataceae) is highly diverse, currently containing more than 135 known and validly named Mycoplasma species (commonly referred as ‘mycoplasmas’). Mycoplasmas are commensals or pathogens of a broad range of vertebrate animal species including mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish (Brown, 2019; Brown et al., 2019), however, they have also been demonstrated to be present in invertebrate animals such as cephalopods (Ramírez et al., 2019).

Some mycoplasma isolates from seabirds were originally identified as Mycoplasma (M.) gallisepticum which is the etiologic agent of a chronic respiratory disease syndrome in poultry causing considerable economic loss and sanitary impact (Ferguson-Noel et al., 2020). Its main hosts are domestic Galliformes, however, natural infections of various wild bird species have been reported worldwide (Le Gall-Ladevèze et al., 2022, Sawicka et al., 2020). On the other hand, new Mycoplasma species have been described in wild birds and some of them are closely related to M. gallisepticum, such as M. tullyi recovered from Humboldt penguins (Spheniscus humboldti) (Yavary et al., 2017) and an unidentified enterotropic Mycoplasma species isolated from a European starling (Sturnus vulgaris) (Le Gall-Ladevèze et al., 2022). Additionally, Lu et al. (2008) detected mollicutes DNA in the feces of gulls (Larus spp.), and more recently, in the gastrointestinal microbiota of the yellow-legged gull (Larus michahellis) (Noguera et al., 2018). However, none of these mycoplasmas have been isolated yet. Consequently, we were motivated to isolate mycoplasmas colonizing in seabirds in order to increase the knowledge of the circulating mycoplasma in wild life bird populations.

This investigation resulted in the discovery of a novel Mycoplasma species, which is described, using a polyphasic approach, and following the guidelines of the minimal standards for the description of new species of the class Mollicutes (Brown et al., 2007) as well as recommendations provided by the Subcommittee on the Taxonomy of Mollicutes (Firrao and Brown, 2013, May and Brown, 2019). The name Mycoplasma bradburyae sp. nov. is proposed for the new species with the designated type strain T158TT (DSM 110708T = NCTC 14398T). The completed genome sequence of T158T has been deposited at GenBank under the accession number CP101414.