A gram-reaction-negative, rod-shaped, gliding and bright-yellow-pigmented bacterial strain, designated JCN-23(T), was isolated from a soil sample collected from an arid area in Gansu Province in north-west China, and characterized by using a polyphasic taxonomic approach. This isolate grew optimally at 30 °C and in the absence of NaCl. The only respiratory quinone was menaquinone-7 and the major cellular fatty acids were iso-C(15 : 0), iso-C(17 : 0) 3-OH, summed feature 9 (iso-C(17 : 1)ω9c and/or C(16 : 0) 10-methyl) and summed feature 3 (C(16 : 1)ω7c and/or C(16 : 1)ω6c). The only polyamine was homospermidine and the major polar lipid was phosphatidylethanolamine. The DNA G+C content was 47.1 mol%. Comparative 16S rRNA gene sequence analysis showed that strain JCN-23(T) was a member of the phylum Bacteroidetes, exhibiting the highest 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to Flavitalea populi CCTCC AB 208255(T) (97.6 %). No other recognized bacterial species showed more than 93.4 % 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity to the novel isolate. DNA-DNA hybridization experiments showed a low level (26 %) of DNA-DNA relatedness between strain JCN-23(T) and F. populi CCTCC AB 208255(T). On the basis of the phenotypic and genotypic data and phylogenetic inference, strain JCN-23(T) is considered to represent a novel species of the genus Flavitalea, for which the name Flavitalea gansuensis sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is JCN-23(T) ( = ACCC 05418(T) = KCTC 23071(T)). Emended descriptions of the genus Flavitalea and Flavitalea populi are also proposed.