FIGURE LEGENDS
Figure 1: Overview map with (A) location of the Belgian part of the North Sea (BPNS) in the wider North Sea and (B) sampling locations of this study in the BPNS. Colors indicate the distribution of the macrobenthic communities (after Degraer et al. 2008).
Figure 2: Percentage of ASVs found in ethanol (E) and bulk (B) samples that received taxonomic assignment at the different taxonomic levels for each primer set using the unrarified datasets.
Figure 3: The number of unique and shared species between morphological, bulk DNA and eDNA from the ethanol preservative datasets for each of the five primer sets (A, B, C, D and E). Datasets are based on the four samples that were identified morphologically to allow a one-on-one comparison.
Figure 4: Multidimensional scaling plots based on Bray Curtis dissimilarity index for each primer set (A,B,C,D and E). Colors indicate the four locations (120: red, 330: blue, 840:green and ZVL: purple), full circles indicate bulk DNA and open triangles eDNA samples from the ethanol preservative.
Figure 5: Effect of sample type, body size and body skeleton on the probability of detecting macrobenthos species in bulk DNA (B) or eDNA from the ethanol preservative (E) samples in relation to body size (A) and body skeleton (B). Probabilities are based on the generalized linear mixed effects model in Table 3.