A Gram-stain-negative, aerobic, yellow-pigmented, non-spore-forming, non-motile, rod-shaped bacterium, designated strain DHOB07T, was isolated from a soil sample collected from the lower subtropical forest of the Dinghushan Biosphere Reserve, Guangdong Province, PR China (23° 10' N 112° 31' E). Strain DHOB07T grew at 10-37 °C, pH 4-7 and 0-0.5 % (w/v) NaCl, with an optimum at 28 °C, pH 5-5.5 and 0% (w/v) NaCl on R2A medium. Phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rRNA gene sequences showed that the strain formed a clade with Dyella jejuensis JP1T, Dyella nitratireducens DHG59T, Dyella koreensis BB4T, Dyella marensis CS5-B2Tand Dyellasoli JS12-10T, with sequence similarities of 98.9, 98.0, 97.9, 97.9 and 97.8 %, respectively. Multilocus sequence analysis based on the concatenated sequences of partial housekeeping genes gyrB, lepA and recA confirmed that strain DHOB07T belongs to thegenus Dyella but is distinct from all currently known species of the genus Dyella. The G+C content of the genomic DNA was 58.2 mol%. The DNA-DNA relatedness value between strain DHOB07T and D. jejuensis JP1T was 41.8 %. Iso-C16 : 0, iso-C15 : 0 and iso-C17 : 1ω9c were the major fatty acids, and ubiquinone-8 was the only respiratory quinone detected, all of which supported the affiliation of strain DHOB07T to the genus Dyella. On the basis of the polyphasic characterization results presented above, strain DHOB07T represents a novel species of the genus Dyella, for which the name Dyella lipolytica sp. nov. is proposed. The type strain is DHOB07T (=NBRC 111473T=KCTC 52132T).