A taxonomic study was carried out on strain SH25T, which was isolated from soft coral collected from Dongshan Island, China. The isolate was a heterotrophic organism to the soft coral, and was a Gram-reaction-negative, short rod that was motile by a polar flagellum. Growth was observed at salinities from 0 to 12 % and at temperatures from 10 to 41 °C. It was unable to reduce nitrate to nitrite. Phylogenetic analysis based on 16S rRNA gene sequences indicated that strain SH25T belonged to the genus Parvularcula , with highest sequence similarity to Parvularcula lutaonensis CC-MMS-1T (96.1 %) and Parvularcula bermudensis HTCC2503T (94.3 %); 16S rRNA gene sequence similarities to other taxa were below 90.0 %. The dominant fatty acids were C16 : 0 and summed feature 8 (C18 : 1ω7c/ω6c,). The G+C content of the chromosomal DNA was 61.8 mol%. The major quinone was Q10. These combined genotypic and phenotypic data show that strain SH25T represents a novel species of the genus Parvularcula , for which the name Parvularcula dongshanensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is SH25T ( = CCTCC AB 2010355T = LMG 26158T = MCCC 1A06534T).