To determine potential surrogates of littoral macroinvertebrate communities for marine bioassessment and for evaluating biological conservation, the different taxonomic resolutions as surrogates were studied based on six datasets collected from intertidal zones of the Yellow Sea, near Qingdao, northern China, during the period of 1989–1998. Samples were collected yearly at five stations with different bottom types during the summer season (June). The genus- and family-level resolutions maintained sufficient information to analyse the ecological patterns of the macroinvertebrate communities for assessing ecological quality status in littoral ecosystems. The mollusc assemblages, alone or in combination with arthropod assemblages, may be used as a surrogate of littoral macroinvertebrate communities, at both species- and genus-level resolutions. The results suggest that the use of simplifications in macroinvertebrate fauna at genus-level resolutions or using smaller taxonomic assemblages (e.g. molluscs and arthropods) are time-efficient and would allow improving sampling strategies of large spatial/temporal scale bioassessment programmes and biological conservation researches in littoral ecosystems.