Thrips Linnaeus, 1758

Mound, Laurence A. & Nickle, David A., 2009, Species of the genus Thrips (Thysanoptera) from Peninsular Malaysia, with a checklist of recorded Thripidae, Zootaxa 2023, pp. 55-68 : 59

Thrips Linnaeus

This is the largest genus in the Thysanoptera , with 286 species listed worldwide ( Mound, 2008). Almost 100 of these species are known to occur in the area between the Indian peninsular, Australia and the Pacific islands ( Palmer, 1992). Some of these are well known as pests, but for many species there is little available information on their biology, geographical distributions, host associations and structural variation. Because of this lack of biological information, accurate identification continues to be a problem in some groups of species. Differences quoted in published literature for species such as T. javanicus , T. levatus and T. morindae are based on very few specimens, and thus cannot be expected to be entirely reliable.

Many Thrips species breed only in flowers, although a considerable number of species breed on leaves, and pest species often breed in both places. Within the genus, there is much variation between species in body size, body colour, number of antennal segments, and detailed chaetotaxy of the body and wings, such that 17 genus-group names are now placed as synonyms of Thrips ( Mound and Masumoto, 2005) . Membership of the genus is determined by the presence of paired ctenidia laterally on the abdominal tergites, these ctenidia being posteromesad of the spiracles on tergite VIII, whereas they are anterolateral to the spiracles in species of Frankliniella ( Mound 2002) . Descriptive details of the Asian species of Thrips genus are available in Bhatti (1980), Palmer (1992), also Mound and Masumoto (2005).