Astrothrips Karny, 1921

Li, Yajin, Mound, Laurence A., Xie, Yanlan & Zhang, Hongrui, 2021, Species of Astrothrips from China, with one new species and a list of plant associations (Thysanoptera, Panchaetothripinae), Zootaxa 4920 (2), pp. 267-277 : 269

Astrothrips Karny

Astrothrips Karny, 1921 .

Type species Heliothrips globiceps Karny.

Head with raised reticulate sculpture, ocellar area sometimes elevated; maxillary palps 2-segmented. Antennae 8- segmented, but usually with the distal segments fused to produce only 5, 6 or 7 visible segments; sense cones on III and IV forked or simple. Pronotum with some reticulate sculpture. Mesoscutum usually with anterior notch. Tarsi 1-segmented. Fore wings banded, bearing stout veinal setae, costal setae shorter than costal cilia; posteromarginal cilia wavy. Abdominal tergite II with anterior margin strongly constricted, and anterolaterally with a group of prominent strongly recurved microtrichia; tergites III–VII with transverse reticulation; VIII with no posteromarginal comb; X divided longitudinally. Males frequently with pore plates on abdominal sternites (absent only in aucubae and tumiceps ).

Comments. The members of this genus are all from the Old World tropics, including northern Australia, and in structure they are similar to those of Anisopilothrips , Tryphactothrips and Elixothrips . However, of these three genera the species in the first two have distinctive sculptured areolae on the tergites and sternites ( Wilson 1975), and the single species in Elixothrips has the mesonotum with a longitudinal division and the tenth abdominal tergite with a pair of capitate setae (Zhang et.al. 2020). Recent phylogenetical studies recovered a polytomy between Astrothrips and two other clades: Elixothrips + Anisopilothrips and Copidothrips + Panchaetothrips ( Zhang et al. 2019) .

The first review of Astrothrips was provided by Stannard and Mitri (1962) with a key to females of four species. Bhatti (1968) subsequently provided a key to five species, and Wilson (1975) reviewed the genus and provided a key to ten species. Kûdo (1979) described A. strasseni from Southeast Asia, Chen (1980) described A. chisinliaoensis from Taiwan, and Rachana et al. (2019) published a key to six Astrothrips species known from India. The genus now comprises 12 species (Thrips Wiki 2020), with only three previously recorded from China (Mirab-balou et al. 2011; Zhang et al. 2020), Astrothrips aucubae , A. chisinliaoensis , and A. strasseni . However, four more Astrothrips species are here newly recorded from China of which one is newly described.