Thripidae, Stevens, 1829

Mound, L. A. & Ng, Y. F., 2009, An illustrated key to the genera of Thripinae (Thysanoptera) from South East Asia, Zootaxa 2265 (1), pp. 27-47 : 28

Thripidae subfamily Thripinae

The Thripinae , the target of the present work, is the largest of the four subfamilies in the family Thripidae . Recognition of these four subfamilies is facilitated by an electronic, multi-access key available on the web ( Mound, 2009c). The first subfamily, Panchaetothripinae , is a worldwide group of about 40 genera and 135 species, and includes the well-known Greenhouse Thrips of the northern hemisphere, Heliothrips haemorrhoidalis . This subfamily also includes a number of other minor pest species ( Wilson, 1975; Kudo, 1995). The second subfamily, Dendrothripinae, comprises 15 genera and about 100 species of leaf-feeding thrips, and is represented widely across the Old World ( Mound, 1999), but with remarkably few species recorded from South East Asia. The third subfamily, Sericothripinae, is a group of three genera and 150 species that is found worldwide, with the species breeding on leaves as well as in flowers. Kudo (1997) has discussed many Asian species, and an account is available of the Australian Sericothripinae species ( Mound & Tree, 2009).

The Thripinae includes about 1650 species in 230 genera ( Mound, 2009a,c), and the key presented here facilitates recognition of 65 (28%) of these genera. Thripinae are represented worldwide, and the genus Thrips is the largest genus in the Thysanoptera . Regional accounts of the species in Thrips genus are available for North America ( Nakahara, 1994), Europe (zur Strassen, 2003), Pakistan to the Pacific ( Palmer, 1992), and Australia ( Mound & Masumoto, 2005). Keys are also available to species of a few other genera of Thripinae , including Anaphothrips ( Nakahara, 1995; Mound & Masumoto, 2009), Eremiothrips ( Bhatti et al., 2003) , and Frankliniella ( Mound & Marullo, 1996) . However, comprehensive identification keys to genera are more difficult to produce, due to logistic problems in obtaining specimens of the relevant taxa, as well as the inherent problems created by variation both within and between taxa. Recent keys that deal with genera of Thripidae are available for the Philippines ( Reyes, 1994), Central America ( Mound & Marullo, 1996), Europe (zur Strassen, 2003), and California ( Hoddle et al., 2009).