The data is for insect samples from Malaise traps in Yinggeling National Nature Reserve, Hainan Province, China. Samples were prepared by using one leg from all specimens equal to or larger than a large fly (~5 mm length) and whole bodies of everything smaller. Following the protocol of Ji et al. (2013), samples were homogenized, and DNA was extracted, quality-checked, PCR-amplified with indexed, degenerate primers for the standard mtCOI barcode region, and gel-purified. The PCR products were A-amplicon-sequenced on a Roche GS FLX at the Kunming Institute of Zoology. The 21 Yinggeling samples were sequenced on two 1/8 regions (one 1/8 region shared with other samples), producing 40 261 raw reads
