Rhamphothrips yunnanensis, Li & Liu & Zhang, 2021

Li, Yajin, Liu, Zhuocheng & Zhang, Hongrui, 2021, Rhamphothrips genus-group in China, with description of two new species and two new records (Thysanoptera: Thripidae), Zootaxa 5039 (3), pp. 425-432 : 430

Rhamphothrips Karny

The genus Rhamphothrips comprises 20 leaf-feeding species, most of them recorded in the Old World ( Thrips Wiki 2021 ). Bhatti (1978) provided a key to distinguish 10 species, but since that publication a further 10 species have been described from various countries. Mound and Tree (2011) published a key to four species from Australia, Tyagi and Kumar (2013) compiled a key to six species from India, Masumoto and Okajima (2018) described two new species from Japan. Li et al. (2018) provided a key to five species of Rhamphothrips from China, with descriptions of two newly recorded species, aureus and santokhi . Recently, we rechecked those slides that had been identified as aureus and concluded that they are a misidentification of R. yunnanensis sp.n., as discussed below.

Unfortunately, the species aureus from India (and its synonym hartwigi ) cannot be identified satisfactorily from description, and the depositary of the type specimens is not known. Bhatti (1977) considered the male of R. aureus to be unusual in this genus in having one strong and one shaded seta on the mesosternum, but this seems to conflict with the key in Bhatti (1978) in which both female and male have one strong and shaded seta on the mesosternum. Ananthakrishnan (1954) described the abdominal tergites of the male of aureus as “without teeth”. However, Bhatti (1977) stated that the craspedum on tergite II is without any discernible teeth, but on III is produced into finely pointed triangular teeth which are directed backward; IV–VI each with teeth directed backward in middle third, directed laterally on either side; VII and VIII each with similar laterally directed teeth, the median part of the flange smooth in each case. Otherwise, the aureus male fore tarsi have a small tooth before the apex ( Bhatti 1977), but this character was not mentioned in the recent study of Rhamphothrips .