How the Refurbishment of Beaches Affects the Meiofaunal Composition

Jackson Lockwood

Abstract

My research is on the effect of beach nourishment on the Meiofauna diversity. Meiofauna are tiny organisms that live in between sand grains. They are big enough to not be called microscopic organisms yet too small to be called macro organisms. When new sand is brought in to refurbish a beach the fine particles quickly wash away leaving only the large particles. Meiofauna are at the bottom of the food chain. We can assume a healthy food chain if there is a large meiofauna diversity. In order to test the strength and diversity of the food chain at each site samples of sand were collected from different beach levels at Emerald Isle and Bear Island in North Carolina. The DNA was sent off to be analyzed and we used metabarcoding and blasted the DNA. This told us what kind of organisms there were. We put the remaining sand into a shifter and separated it by grain size. This told us what kind of organisms lived in what grain size. While going through this process we discovered a previously unseen organism. I was given the organism to classify. To do this I took pictures and compared it to other similar species. I gave it the name Planaria lockwoodii. The results are not clear because the research is ongoing. What we have found is that Bear Island which sees less tourism than Emerald Isle has a greater diversity due to the access to more sizes of sand grains.

 
Mar 30th, 10:00 AM

How the Refurbishment of Beaches Affects the Meiofaunal Composition

Founders Hall 213 B

My research is on the effect of beach nourishment on the Meiofauna diversity. Meiofauna are tiny organisms that live in between sand grains. They are big enough to not be called microscopic organisms yet too small to be called macro organisms. When new sand is brought in to refurbish a beach the fine particles quickly wash away leaving only the large particles. Meiofauna are at the bottom of the food chain. We can assume a healthy food chain if there is a large meiofauna diversity. In order to test the strength and diversity of the food chain at each site samples of sand were collected from different beach levels at Emerald Isle and Bear Island in North Carolina. The DNA was sent off to be analyzed and we used metabarcoding and blasted the DNA. This told us what kind of organisms there were. We put the remaining sand into a shifter and separated it by grain size. This told us what kind of organisms lived in what grain size. While going through this process we discovered a previously unseen organism. I was given the organism to classify. To do this I took pictures and compared it to other similar species. I gave it the name Planaria lockwoodii. The results are not clear because the research is ongoing. What we have found is that Bear Island which sees less tourism than Emerald Isle has a greater diversity due to the access to more sizes of sand grains.