Bradythrips Hood & Williams, 1925

Mound, Laurence A., Lima, Élison Fabrício B. & O’Donnell, Cheryle A., 2023, What is a genus-interpreting structural diversity among species of urothripine Phlaeothripinae (Thysanoptera), Zootaxa 5319 (1), pp. 91-102 : 98

Bradythrips Hood & Williams

Bradythrips Hood & Williams , in Hood, 1925: 68. Type species Bradythrips hesperus Hood & Williams.

The type species was based on a single wingless female collected in Guyana, on the north coast of South America. However, at the U.S. National Museum in Washington and in the collections of Universidade Federal do Piauí, Floriano, in Brazil, we have studied in addition to this holotype the following wingless females of B. hesperus : one from Panama, seven from Guyana, and more than 10 from Brazil along the Amazon River basin (States of Amazonas, Pará and Amapá). In contrast, the other five species that are now known in this genus are all from southeast Asia, including Malaysia, southern China, Philippines and Borneo, and specimens of hesperus have also been recorded from India, Borneo and the Solomon Islands ( Okajima 1987). These records indicate that Bradythrips is likely to be a genus of the Asian tropics but with one species that has been inadvertently transported to South America, probably by sailing ships.

A key to five of the six species of Bradythrips is available ( Okajima & Urushihara 1995a), and of the two species with the pronotum and fore legs yellow, zhangi differs from hesperus in having the head more uniformly brown and the abdominal tergites with narrow longitudinal sculpture medially. All six species have antennal segments III–V clearly distinct from each other, in contrast to the condition in Stephanothrips species. The members of Bradythrips differ from those previously placed in Baenothrips in having the maxillary stylets close together medially in the head, and only a single pair of prominent setae on the anterior margin of the head ( Fig. 26 ). Although B. hesperus has the metathoracic epimera bearing a small stout seta laterally, it appears that the other members of this genus lack this structure.

Figures

FIGURES 21–32. Heads of urothripines.(21) Amphibolothrips grassii; (22) A. knechteli; (23) A. marginatus; (24) Bebelothrips flavicinctus; (25) Conocephalothrips tricolor; (26) Bradythrips hesperus; (27) Baenothrips cuneatus; (28) B. murphyi; (29) S. erythrinus; (30) B. guatemalensis; (31) B. moundi; (32) Stephanothrips uvarovi [paratype].