Scirtothrips Shull, 1909

Mound, Laurence A. & Wells, Alice, 2023, Endemism among Lord Howe IslandThysanoptera, with new species of Baenothrips (Phlaeothripidae) and Scirtothrips (Thripidae), Zootaxa 5228 (1), pp. 81-91 : 86

Scirtothrips Shull

Worldwide, this genus comprises just over 100 described species (ThripsWiki 2022), and in Australia there are 21 named species ( Hoddle & Mound 2003), plus an unknown number of undescribed species judging from the slide collections at the Australian National Insect Collection. Three species of this genus have been found on Lord Howe Island. One of these, S. albomaculatus Bianchi , was described from New Caledonia but has been taken widely in eastern Australia between southern Queensland and South Australia on various plants ( Mound & Tree 2020). On Lord Howe Island this species was found breeding commonly on the leaves of the shrub Dodonaea viscosa [ Sapindaceae ]. The other two species are here newly described. They were found living on the young fronds of ferns—one on Cyathea and the other taken from an unidentified fern. These two species have widely spaced transverse sculpture lines on the pronotum, and this character state seems to be shared amongst Scirtothrips species only by two species known from tree ferns in Australia and New Zealand. The second of these two new species is remarkable in being the only known member of the genus Scirtothrips that lacks closely spaced rows of microtrichia on the abdominal tergites.