Advances in molecular ecology offer unprecedented opportunities to understand the ecology and evolution of insects, the complex ways in which they interact and their role in ecosystem functioning. Rapidly developing DNA sequencing technologies are resolving previously intractable questions in taxonomic and functional biodiversity and provide significant potential to determine formerly difficult to observe plant–insect interactions. We provide an overview of the state-of-the-art and critically appraise the range of molecular approaches currently available for the study of insect pollination, host–parasitoid interactions and/or wider food-web studies. Species-interaction data are increasingly being incorporated into ecological network analyses. DNA metabarcoding offers opportunities to scale-up efforts to create large, highly resolved, phylogenetically structured networks within an exciting framework to study pressing questions in ecology and evolution.

分子生态学的进步提供了前所未有的机会来了解昆虫的生态学和进化，昆虫相互作用的复杂方式以及它们在生态系统功能中的作用。迅速发展的DNA测序技术正在解决生物多样性和功能性生物多样性方面以前难以解决的问题，并为确定以前难以观察到的植物与昆虫之间的相互作用提供了巨大的潜力。我们提供了最新技术的概述，并严格评估了目前可用于昆虫授粉，寄主与寄生虫相互作用和/或更广泛的食物网研究的分子方法的范围。物种相互作用数据越来越多地被纳入生态网络分析中。DNA元条形码提供了扩大规模以创建大型，高度分辨，