Thrip
| Thrips Temporal range: 299–0 Ma Permian – recent |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Arthropoda |
| Class: | Insecta |
| Subclass: | Pterygota |
| Superorder: | Exopterygota |
| Order: |
Thysanoptera Haliday, 1836 |
| Families | |
Thrips (order Thysanoptera) are minute, slender insects with fringed wings. Different thrips species feed on a large variety of plants and animals, puncturing them and sucking up the contents.
A large number of thrips species are pests of commercially important crops. Some species of thrips feed on other insects or mites and are considered beneficial, while others feed on fungal spores or pollen. Approximately 6,000 species have been described. Thrips are generally tiny (1 mm long or less) and fly only weakly, though they can be carried long distances by the wind. In the right conditions, such as in greenhouses, many species can exponentially increase in population size and form large swarms because of a lack of natural predators, making them an irritation to humans.
The generic and English name thrips is a direct transliteration of the ancient Greek θρίψ, thrips, meaning "woodworm". Like some other animal names such as sheep, deer, and moose, the word thrips is both the singular and plural forms, so there may be many thrips or a single thrips. Other common names for thrips include thunderflies, thunderbugs, storm flies, thunderblights, storm bugs, corn flies, corn lice, freckle bugs, and physopods. The name of the order Thysanoptera is constructed from the ancient Greek words θύσανος, thysanos, "tassel or fringe", and πτερόν, pteron, "wing", for the insects' fringed wings.
Thrips are small hemimetabolic insects with a distinctive cigar-shaped bauplan. They are elongated with transversely constricted bodies. They range in size from 0.5 to 14 millimetres (0.020 to 0.551 in) in length for the larger predatory thrips, but most thrips are about 1 mm in length. Flight-capable thrips have two similar, strap-like pairs of wings with a fringe of bristles. Their legs usually end in two tarsal segments with a bladder-like structure known as an "arolium" at the pretarsus. This structure can be everted by means of hemolymph pressure, enabling the insect to walk on vertical surfaces.
Thrips have asymmetrical mouthparts unique to the group. Unlike the Hemiptera (true bugs), the right mandible of thrips is reduced and vestigial – and in some species completely absent. The left mandible is larger, forming a narrow stylet used to pierce the cell wall of tissues. Some species inject digestive enzymes as the maxillary stylets and hypopharynx are inserted into the opening to drain cellular fluids. This process leaves a distinctive silvery or bronze scarring on the surfaces of the stems or leaves where the thrips have fed.
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Wikipedia