Intertidal transects of the microbial communities from sandy beaches of Calvert Island, British Columbia, Canada

Sandy beaches dominate coastlines world wide and serve as buffers between land and sea. These are dynamic environments composed of shifting sediments and variable mixtures of marine and freshwater due to tidal and seasonal storm cycles. To better understand the contributions of the microbial community to sandy beach ecosystems, we investigated the diversity of protists from five sandy pocket beaches on the northwest corner of Calvert Island, located in the central coast of British Columbia, Canada by sequencing the V4 variable regions of the small subunit (18S) ribosomal RNA gene. Sand was sampled from different elevations along transect lines from the high tide line to the swash zone. We also investigated the differences in the communities of protists that exist attached to the sand and interstitially in the water between sand grains.