Intertidal transects of the microbial communities from West Beach of Calvert Island, British Columbia, Canada, 2015-2016. West Beach, Calvert island microbiomes

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 and metazoans from West Beach 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 seasonally from different elevations along transect lines from the high tide line to the swash zone.

全球海岸线以沙质海滩为主，它们是陆地与海洋之间的天然缓冲带。该类生境具有显著的动态特性：沉积物持续发生迁移，且受潮汐与季节性风暴周期的影响，海水与淡水的混合比例始终处于动态变化之中。为深入解析微生物群落对沙质海滩生态系统的贡献，本研究选取位于加拿大不列颠哥伦比亚省中部海岸的卡尔弗特岛西北角西海滩作为研究区域，通过对小亚基（18S）核糖体RNA基因的V4可变区进行测序，探究了该区域原生生物与后生动物的多样性。研究人员沿从高潮线至激浪带的样线，按季节采集了不同高程的沙样。