Yellow, white, and blue sticky cards were tested in an avocado orchard for their attractiveness to Scirtothrips perseae, Frankliniella occidentalis and Franklinothrips orizabensis. Clear pieces of plastic coated with adhesive were used as controls to determine rates of random interception of thrips independent of color. Yellow was most attractive to S. perseae and white cards captured mostly F....

A temperature-driven process model was developed to describe the seasonal patterns of populations of onion thrips, Thrips tabaci Lindeman, in onions. The model used daily cohorts (individuals of the same developmental stage and daily age) as the population unit. Stage transitions were modeled as a logistic function of accumulated degree-days to account for variability in development rate among ...

South East Asia pest thrips species, Thrips parvispinus (Karny), is a serious pest on a number of agricultural and horticultural crops in a number of plant families. Based on an integrated approach of morphology and DNA barcoding, invasion of this serious pest is reported first time from India on papaya plantations. Molecular data have corroborated with the morphological identification. Haploty...

It has been shown that many insects have Enterobacteriaceae bacteria in their gut system. The western flower thrips, Frankliniella occidentalis Pergande [Thysanoptera: Thripidae], has a symbiotic relation with Erwinia species gut bacteria. To determine if other Thripidae species have similar bacterial symbionts, the onion thrips, Thrips tabaci, was studied because, like F. occidentalis, it is p...

Development of a control strategy for thrips attacking nectarine trees depends on an understanding of their phenology, distribution, and life history as related to characteristics of nectarine orchards. To this end, we compared the overwintering behavior, distribution, and abundance of western flower thrips, Frankliniella occidentalis (Pergande), among 11 nectarine orchards located in the dry c...

The presence of reproductively altruistic castes is one of the primary traits of the eusocial societies. Adaptation and regulation of the sterile caste, to a certain extent, drives the evolution of eusociality. Depending on adaptive functions of the first evolved sterile caste, eusocial societies can be categorized into the worker-first and soldier-first lineages, respectively. The former is ma...

Eremiothrips bhattii sp.n. is described from Fars province, Iran. Three other species of this genus that have previously been recorded from other parts of Iran, E. similis Bhatti, E. taghizadehi (zur Strassen) and E. varius (Bhatti) are reported from Fars province for the first time. A key is provided for identification of the Iranian Eremiothrips species based on males.

1Plant Protection Institute, Centre for Agricultural Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences H-1525 Budapest, P.O. Box 102, Hungary 2Szabolcs-Sz.-B. County Goverment Office of Plant and Soil Conservation Board H-4400 Nyíregyháza, Kótaji út 33, Hungary 3Department of Zoology, Hungarian Natural History Museum H-1083 Budapest, Baross u. 13, Hungary *Corresponding author’s e-mail: tobias.istvan@agr...

Animals are commonly exposed to multiple environmental stimuli, but whether, and under which circumstances, they can attend to multiple stimuli in multitask learning challenges is elusive. Here, we assessed whether simultaneously occurring chemosensory stimuli interfere with each other in a dual-task learning challenge. We exposed predatory mites Neoseiulus californicus early in life to either ...

Callococcithrips gen.n. is erected for the species Rhynchothrips fuscipennis Moulton that lives only among the protective waxy secretions of an eriococcid on Kunzea in south-eastern Australia. Larvae and adults of this thrips move rapidly amongst the sticky wax strands, and their maxillary stylets are unusually long and convoluted. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the thrips is predatory o...