The Aurantimonadaceae are a small family of marine bacteria. There are three known species. Aurantimonas coralicida causes a white plague in coral

Coral

Corals are marine animals in class Anthozoa of phylum Cnidaria typically living in compact colonies of many identical individual "polyps". The group includes the important reef builders that inhabit tropical oceans and secrete calcium carbonate to form a hard skeleton.A coral "head" is a colony of...

s, progressively destroying their tissues and leaving an expanding area that appears bleached. It has been epidemic in the Caribbean. The individual bacteria are rod-shaped, with polar flagella, and adhere to form branching chains. Fulvimarina pelagi was isolated from seawater, and takes the form of non-motile rods.

Both species are obligate aerobes, and obtain their nourishment chemoheterotrophically. They test positive for oxidase

Oxidase

An oxidase is any enzyme that catalyzes an oxidation-reduction reaction involving molecular oxygen as the electron acceptor. In these reactions, oxygen is reduced to water or hydrogen peroxide ....

 and catalase

Catalase

Catalase is a common enzyme found in nearly all living organisms that are exposed to oxygen, where it catalyzes the decomposition of hydrogen peroxide to water and oxygen...

, and contain carotenoid

Carotenoid

Carotenoids are tetraterpenoid organic pigments that are naturally occurring in the chloroplasts and chromoplasts of plants and some other photosynthetic organisms like algae, some bacteria, and some types of fungus. Carotenoids can be synthesized fats and other basic organic metabolic building...

 pigments, possibly to protect against solar radiation.

Etymology

The name Aurantimonas derives from:
New Latin

New Latin

The term New Latin, or Neo-Latin, is used to describe the Latin language used in original works created between c. 1500 and c. 1900. Among other uses, Latin during this period was employed in scholarly and scientific publications...

 adjective aurantus, orange-coloured; Greek feminine gender

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

 noun monas (μονάς / μονάδα)

-monas

The suffix -monas is used in microbiology for many genera and is intended to mean "unicellular organism".-Meaning:The suffix -monas is used in microbiology for many genera in a similar way to -bacter, -bacillus, -coccus or -spirillum...

, a unit; New Latin

New Latin

The term New Latin, or Neo-Latin, is used to describe the Latin language used in original works created between c. 1500 and c. 1900. Among other uses, Latin during this period was employed in scholarly and scientific publications...

 feminine gender

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

 noun Aurantimonas, orange-coloured unicellular organism.

Members of the genus Aurantimonas can be referred to as aurantimonads (viz. Trivialisation of names).