Biodiversity and distribution of zoobenthos in the ecological water replenishment area of the Yellow River estuary coastal wetland revealed by eDNA metabarcoding

Yellow River Estuary Coastal Wetland using a 100 cm × 35 cm sampling area at each point, which ensures that the analysis encompasses a significant portion of the community. In addi- tion, the zoobenthic eDNA database is still incomplete, which limits the effective interpretation of biological information. The effectiveness of eDNA depends heavily on the quality and completeness of reference databases. Without well-curated DNA barcodes, ambiguities in species identification may still arise, similar to challenges faced in morphology-based taxonomy. Thus, establishing a special- ized eDNA database for zoobenthos is essential. In this study, a total of 981 families (975,690 reads) were identified at the taxonomic family level, comprising 174 benthic animal families (331,711 reads, 34.0%), 214 algal families (272,331 reads, 27.9%), 244 fungal families (36,975 reads, 3.8%), 16 parasitic families (1,032 reads, 0.1%), and 213 non-benthic protozoan families (333,615 reads, 34.2%). These data indicate a high proportion of non-benthic organisms, Fig 5. Comparative Venn diagram showing the number of zoobenthic families detected by each method. Intersections represent common species shared among methods. Abbreviations: CN-B (Chinese Nearshore Benthos Classification System Books), eDNA-B (eDNA metabarcoding in this experiment), and Morph-B (traditional morpho- taxonomic approaches). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0315346.g005 PLOS ONE Biodiversity and zoobenthos distribution in yellow river estuary wetlands revealed by eDNA metabarcoding

PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0315346 December 18, 2024 12 / 19