Major Compulsory Revisions:

1. The authors acknowledge that their tests on revealing abundance information could be improved by using well-designed tests but I believe that this could improve the full manuscript. Thus, I think that they need to add the results from a mock community were they can fully test the accuracy of the methods by using well characterized insects and the biomass of each of them.

2. The authors need to add the scripts/software used in the pipelines to a publicly available repository.

Minor Essential Revisions

1. The authors should add the kind of samples used for the analysis to the Introduction of the manuscript.

Level of interest: An article of importance in its field

Quality of written English: Acceptable

Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician.

Declaration of competing interests: I declare that I have no competing interests

I believe the changes made by the authors have improved the manuscript greatly and is ready for publication.

Level of interest: An article of importance in its field

Quality of written English: Acceptable

Statistical review: No, the manuscript does not need to be seen by a statistician.

Declaration of competing interests: I declare that I have no competing interests