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Data from: Wealth does not buy richness: Plant and soil bacterial diversity in temperate suburban lawns are not influenced by income

Youngsteadt, Elsa1; Sow, Alassane2; Gorman, Kate1; Kristy, Brandon2

Published Apr 20, 2026 on Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.t76hdr8cj

Data files

Apr 20, 2026 version files 1.53 MB

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Abstract

Patterns of biodiversity in urban and suburban areas have been increasingly linked to the behaviors and affluence of their residents. Residents of affluent neighborhoods tend to plant more flowering plant species and generally benefit from cooler temperatures and more tree cover. These factors, among others, lead to increased plant, bird, arthropod, and lizard biodiversity in affluent neighborhoods. This dataset pertains to an investigation of this pattern in plant and soil bacterial communities in suburban lawns in Raleigh, North Carolina. We surveyed the diversity of plants and soil bacteria across 30 homes, located in census block groups with median household incomes from $22,000 to $208,000. Overall, we detected 144 plant genera and 7,908 bacterial OTUs. Although bacterial richness increased with soil pH, and soil pH increased weakly with household income, household income was nevertheless a poor predictor of plant and soil bacterial diversity. The lack of correlation between income and plant or bacterial diversity in our humid, subtropical study area is consistent with a broader literature suggesting that effects of affluence on biodiversity are most pronounced in arid climates. This dataset protects the location of individual sampling locations for the privacy of residents, but includes income information at the level of each census block group. For each of the 30 sites, the dataset provides median income of the census block group from 2014 census data; the number of OTUs observed in the rarefied sample; calculated diversity metrics, including Shannon's H and evenness, soil pH, and the number of plant genera detected in 12 one-meter quadrats. OTU abundance per site is provided in a separate file, and taxonomic information about each OTU is in a third file.