A quantitative and qualitative study of interstitial fauna and environmental variables was carried out on five selected sandy beaches of the west coast of India. Species of nine interstitial taxa abound the beaches. Nematodes, harpacticoid copepods, turbellarians, and polychaetes constituted the bulk of the population. The available energy in the beaches ranged from 0.2245 to 16.08？joules/mg and the grain size varied from 0.93 to 2.88 . Organic matter correlated significantly with coarse sand (Pearson correlation ; ). Organic carbon, particle size, and dissolved oxygen determined the abundance and distribution of interstitial fauna as per multivariate BIOENV analysis. Shannon Wiener diversity index was maximum at Cherai (2.027) and minimum at Sakthikulangara (1.144) beach. The value of nematode/copepod ratio ( / ) indicated at Sakthikulangara beach validates the increased sensitivity of harpacticoids to environmental stress. 1. Introduction The coastline of Kerala, which extents up to 590？kms is intercepted by fishing harbours, ports, tourist resorts, mangrove beds, sandy beaches, and so forth [1]. Sandy beaches harbour diverse and abundant assemblage of interstitial organisms and the different taxonomic groups have complex distribution patterns [2]. Cyclic sedimentary processes make the beaches of Kerala fragile. A beach, maintained for a particular period, may not remain there forever. The wave climate and the beach processes along the Kerala coast are found to vary considerably in both spatial and temporal frame [3]. Erosion adversely affects the density of intertidal interstitial populations, which live in the interstices of beach sediments. Biodiversity assessment is the key to understand the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning [4]. Hydrodynamics changes the physicochemical sedimentary environment and food availability which are directly related to meiofauna spatial distribution patterns [5]. Meiofauna plays a major role in pollution monitoring studies [6, 7]. The meiofaunal species are vulnerable to abiotic and hydrodynamic disturbance [8]. Though arguments were traditionally put forth against the use of meiofauna as biological indicator, underlining difficulties in identification, the high rate of sampling frequency and the microscopic size of the organisms, and new technologies and tools, such as standardized methodologies, electronic identification keys, molecular approaches, and the creation of new indices, currently allow for and promote the use of meiofauna in ecological studies [9]. Though several meiofaunal studies
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