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

Author Contributions Conceptualization: Gang Xie, Huaqing Liu. Data curation: Jinhui Liang, Yanlong Wang. Formal analysis: Jie Lan, Qidong Wang. Funding acquisition: Gang Xie. Investigation: Jie Lan, Qidong Wang. Methodology: Gang Xie, Huaqing Liu. Project administration: Huaqing Liu, Jian Zhang. Supervision: Xiaoqiang Cao, Chongyang Ren. Visualization: Jie Lan, Qidong Wang. Writing – original draft: Gang Xie, Huaqing Liu. Writing – review & editing: Gang Xie, Huaqing Liu. References 1. Zhan C, Wang Q, Cheng S, Zeng L, Yu J, Dong C, et al. Investigating the evolution of landscape pat- terns in historical subdeltas and coastal wetlands in the Yellow River Delta over the last 30 years: A geo-informatics approach. Front Mar Sci. 2023; 10: 1115720. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2023. 1115720. 2. Shi H, Lu J, Zheng W, Sun J, Li J, Guo Z, et al. Evaluation system of coastal wetland ecological vulnera- bility under the synergetic influence of land and sea: A case study in the Yellow River Delta, China. Marine Pollution Bulletin. 2020; 161: 111735. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2020.111735 PMID: 33080385 3. Cordier T, Esling P, Lejzerowicz F, Visco J, Ouadahi A, Martins C, et al. Predicting the Ecological Qual- ity Status of Marine Environments from eDNA Metabarcoding Data Using Supervised Machine Learn- ing. ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY. 2017; 51: 9118–9126. https://doi.org/10.1021/ acs.est.7b01518 PMID: 28665601 4. He X, Gilmore SR, Sutherland TF, Hajibabaei M, Miller KM, Westfall KM, et al. Biotic signals associated

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