Fig. 4.

ANI-based verification of heterotypic synonymization. When two independently described taxa were determined to be the same species, the two taxa would be merged and the taxon that was described later would become the heterotypic synonym of the taxon that was described earlier. Lower ANI values of assemblies from heterotypic synonyms (referred to as ‘syntype assemblies’ or ‘syntype’) against the assemblies from type strains (referred to as ‘type assemblies’ or ‘type’) from the same species (red circles) indicate potentially problematic synonymizations. There were at least 27 cases where the ANI values of the assemblies from heterotypic synonyms were lower than the ANI threshold of the corresponding species. The dotted vertical line indicates the default ANI threshold of 96 %.