Numerous studies have implicated urbanization as a major cause of loss of biodiversity. Most of them have focused on plants and animals, even though soil microorganisms make up a large proportion of that biodiversity. However, it is unclear how the soil bacterial community is affected by urban development. Here, paired-end Illumina sequencing of the 16 S rRNA gene at V4 region was performed to study the soil microbial community across Beijing’s built-up area. Proteobacteria, Acidobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Actinobacteria, Gemmatimonadetes, Verrucomicrobia, Planctomycetes, and Chloroflexi were the dominant phyla in all samples, but the relative abundance of these phyla differed significantly across these concentric zones. The diversity and composition of the soil bacterial community were found to be closely correlated with soil pH. Variance partitioning analysis suggested that urban ring roads contributed 5.95% of the bacterial community variation, and soil environmental factors explained 17.65% of the variation. The results of the current work indicate that urban development can alter the composition and diversity of the soil microbial community, and showed pH to be a key factor in the shaping of the composition of the soil bacterial community. Urban development did have a strong impact on the bacterial community of urban soil in Beijing.

A new species of Leptobrachella, Leptobrachella wulingensis sp. nov. is described based on specimens collected from the Wuling mountains in Hunan Province, China. The new species can be distinguished from its congeners by a combination of having a SVL body size range of 24.5–32.8 mm in four adult males and 29.9–38.5 mm in three adult females; dorsal surface brown to reddish brown with indistinct markings; ventral surface creamy white, often with pale brown speckling on chest and margins; flanks with small to moderate black spots; skin on dorsum shagreened with sparse large warts, sometimes with short longitudinal ridges; toes with rudimentary webbing and narrow lateral fringes; dermal ridges under toes interrupted at the articulations; and iris bicolored with a bright orange or golden upper half, fading to silver in the lower half. Uncorrected sequence divergence between L. wulingensis sp. nov. and homologous 16S rRNA sequences available for all known species in the genus are ≥ 2.3%–2.9%.