I am an undergrad biology student at San Diego State University who will graduate in the spring of 2017. I am currently working on a tide pool project where I am taking samples from two locations, Mission Beach and Ocean Beach. From each location I am taking samples from three different microhabitats, hermit crabs, algae, and the water column and I’ll plating each sample on three different carbon sources, erythritol, cellobiose, and aspartic acid. My hypothesis is that the microhabitats that I will sample from will determine the carbon usage rather than the location, which will infer that the microbial community of each microhabitat is conserved. I am working under a COAST grant that I was awarded in the fall of 2015.