Two Gram-negative, rod-shaped, gliding and pink-pigmented bacterial strains, X14-1T and X19-1, were isolated from a mixture of sand samples collected from the desert of Xinjiang, China, and characterized by using a polyphasic taxonomic approach. Strains X14-1T and X19-1 contained MK-7 as the predominant menaquinone. The major cellular fatty acids included iso-C15 : 0, iso-C17 : 0 3-OH, summed feature 3 and summed feature 4. The DNA G+C contents of strains X14-1T and X19-1 were 48.2 and 48.9 mol%, respectively. 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that the isolates were highly related to each other (99.2 %) and confirmed their placement in the genus Pontibacter. Strains X14-1T and X19-1 exhibited 16S rRNA gene similarity levels of 95.0-97.2 % to the type strains of the two Pontibacter species with validly published names. DNA-DNA hybridization experiments revealed a high level of relatedness between the two new isolates (82 %), but low levels of relatedness between strain X14-1T and the phylogenetically most closely related species Pontibacter actiniarum KMM 6156T (51 %). On the basis of genotypic and phenotypic evidence, strains X14-1T and X19-1 are considered to represent a novel species of the genus Pontibacter, for which the name Pontibacter korlensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is X14-1T (=CCTCC AB 206081T=NRRL B-51097T).