Streptothrips Priesner

Mound, Laurence A. & Minaei, Kambiz, 2006, New fungus­feeding thrips (Thysanoptera Phlaeothripinae) from tropical Australia, Zootaxa 1150, pp. 1-17 : 15

Streptothrips Priesner

This genus is one of ten genera placed in the Phlaeothripinae Tribe Plectrothripini ( Okajima, 1981). Streptothrips includes two species that were described from southern Africa in Schizaea Faure , a genus synonymised by Priesner (1949), and the resultant eight species have been taken widely around the tropics; four from southern Africa, two from the Caribbean, and two from Sumatra. All of these species have several large stout sense cones on unusually stout median antennal segments, the eighth antennal segment is long and slender, and the eighth abdominal sternite bears a series of long and stout posteromarginal setae. A key to five species was provided by Okajima (1981), of which one was known only from apterae, and four only from macropterae. Two character states used in that key were subsequently recognised as being related to wing development, because Bournier (1992) described a species from Guadeloupe in which the third antennal segment of the aptera has no sense cones dorsally whereas that of the macroptera has two dorsal sense cones, and the paired ocellar setae are much longer in the aptera than the macroptera. The new species described here from Australia shows similar variation between morphs.