Abstract:Seagrass ecosystems form the foundation of one of the most important coastal wetlands, whereas their habitat quality is declining due to the climate change and multiple anthropogenic pressures. Understanding the pelagic-benthic coupling in energy flows is essential to the protection and restoration of seagrass beds. Stable isotope analysis (mostly δ13C and δ15N) constitutes a radical improvement to analyze diets, which is now widely used to trace the pathways of energy flows and determine the contributions of different diet sources to the ingestion of consumers. In this paper, we conducted the field sampling of the carbon sources and consumer trophic groups of the seagrass bed in the Yellow River estuary wetland in July 2017. In total, we divided all organisms into 15 trophic groups, comprising detritus (suspended particular matter), phytoplankton, epilithic algal matrix, seagrass, Spartina alterniflora, zooplankton, gastropods, bivalves, crabs, polychaetes, shrimps, Planiliza haematocheila, Cynoglossus semilaevis, Synechogobius hasta, and Lateolabrax japonicus. We then detected the stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes (δ13C and δ15N) of all trophic groups. The trophic positions of consumer trophic groups were estimated based on the δ15N values. We obtained the potential diet sources for each consumer trophic group based on the published diet data using gut content analysis or isotope signatures in other seagrass beds or closing to our study area. We ran the Bayesian mixing isotope model (SIAR package in R) each time for each consumer trophic group to quantify its diet composition, and then calculated its pelagic and benthic contributions. The results showed that the δ13C and δ15N values of carbon sources and consumer trophic groups in the seagrass bed all showed significant differences (P<0.05). The δ13C value of pelagic carbon source (phytoplankton) was significantly lower than that of benthic carbon sources (-22.26‰ and -12.34‰, respectively). The trophic positions of consumer trophic groups ranged from 1.49 (zooplankton) to 4.20 (Lateolabrax japonicus). Zooplankton relied on pelagic pathway and gastropods relied on the benthic pathway, whereas other consumer trophic groups relied both on the two pathways. Moreover, we found that the δ13C values of consumer trophic groups decreased significantly with the increasing pelagic contribution, otherwise increased significantly with the increasing benthic contribution (Adj R2=0.49, P=0.015), which is consistent with the distinction of δ13C values between pelagic and benthic carbon sources. The quantitative analysis of the seagrass bed in terms of trophic structure and its pelagic-benthic coupling can help us to gain insight on the trophic transferring characteristics and thereby provide a more systematic perspective on the ecological protection and restoration of seagrass beds.