The present study investigated the species composition,dominance and characteristics of macrobenthic fauna within 13 sampling stations from eight survey cruises in Yangtze River estuary during February,May,August and November,in 2013 and 2014.The Shannon Wiener diversity index (H),Pielous species evenness (E),species abundance (D),dominance index (Y) were used to evaluate Yangtze estuary community characteristics.In addition,the community structures of macrobenthic fauna were analyzed by hierarchical cluster and non-metric sort multidimensional scaling (NMDS).The results showed that a total of 49 species of large benthic animals were obtained in 2013,and 40 species were collected in 2014.The temporal variation of macrobenthos in different seasons changed obviously in the same year,and the total number of species decreased in 2014.The highest abundance and biomass appeared in the spring and autumn,2013 and in winter and summer,2014.The biomass of different seasons was obviously different in 2013 and 2014.Crustaceans were characteristic of macrobenthos in both 2013 and 2014,and the dominant species belonging to fish increased.Higher diversity was observed in the autumn,2013 and in the spring,2014 comparzed to the other seasons in the same year.Generally,and the diversity index showed an increasing tendency during the investigation of two years' period.Hierarchical cluster analysis and NMDS analysis showed that the macrobenthic community of the Yangtze River estuary constituted two groups in 2013,and community in the summer,autumn and winter were grouped from that in spring.In 2014,community in spring,summer and autumn were clustered,and was separated from community in the winter.ABC curve showed that macrobenthic communities in subtidal zones were moderately affected in the four seasons in 2013.In contrast,in 2014,no significant effect on macrobenthic community was observed in the spring,summer and autumn,and macrobenthic community was only affected with heavily moderate interference in winter.The tendency in decreasing interference was observed during the investigation period.