Mud Dragons and Water Bears: The Hidden Beasts Beneath Your Feet

Amanda Heidt MLML/COS

 

Abstract: Meiofauna represent a speciose and abundant group of infaunal microscopic organisms between 20μm-500μm (Mare 1942). Due to their small size and taxonomic obscurity, they remain a fundamentally understudied group despite their integral position at the base of the sandy-beach food web and close association with the surrounding environs. To study the distribution of meiofaunal communities with respect to community composition, sediment samples were taken along the length of the California coast and analyzed using high-throughput sequencing techniques. Sediment characteristics and beach morphodynamic profiles were analyzed to link differences in community structure to possible abiotic drivers. Meiofauna are increasingly being recognized for the important ecological roles they play in maintaining proper ecosystem functioning, habitat monitoring, and as active members of a dynamic food web. They have been implicated as important components within multiple systems. In direct response to this ubiquity, meiofauna have been proposed as an indicator group for monitoring anthropogenic stressors such as pollution, overfishing, and beach modification. Ultimately, the results of this study will provide a detailed and unprecedented description of meiofaunal composition and abundance along a highly variable and biodiverse coastline.

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Bio: Amanda is currently a third-year Master's student in the Invertebrate Molecular Ecology lab at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories and the Education Programs Assistant at Stanford Center for Ocean Solutions. Broadly, she is interested in questions regarding community ecology, invertebrate zoology, invasive species, and scientific communication. Her thesis research focuses on patterns in diversity among meiofauna, small infaunal marine organisms, and how these patterns may be shaped by the physical environment. In an attempt to identify key players in the meiofaunal community, she uses high-throughput sequencing approaches to link molecular DNA "barcodes" to individual species. Amanda graduated from University of California, Santa Cruz, with a BS in Marine Biology and a minor in chemistry in 2013. Outside of the lab, she enjoys travel, rock climbing, diving, camping, and cooking.