A non-motile, rod-shaped and pale-pink bacterium, designated strain WS71T, was isolated from freshwater collected from the Woopo Wetland (Republic of Korea). Cells were Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, catalase-positive and oxidase-negative. The major fatty acids were summed feature 3 (comprising C16 : 1ω6c and/or C16 : 1ω7c), iso-C17 : 0 3-OH, C16 : 0 and iso-C15 : 0. The strain contained menaquinone 7 (MK-7) and the DNA G+C content was 39.4±0.4 mol%. The major polar lipids were phosphatidylethanolamine and an unknown aminophospholipid. A phylogenetic tree based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that WS71T forms an evolutionary lineage within the radiation enclosing the members of genus Mucilaginibacterwith Mucilaginibacter. soyangensis HME6664T as its nearest neighbor (98.3 % sequence similarity). DNA-DNA relatedness between WS71T and M. soyangensis HME6664T was 61.3±1.0 %. A number of phenotypic characteristics distinguished WS71T from the other members of the genus Mucilaginibacter. On the basis of the evidence presented in this study, WS71T represents a novel species, for which the name Mucilaginibacterpuniceus sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is WS71T (=KCTC 32270T=JCM 19495T).