Anaphothrips badiusAnaphothrips badiusBoth sexes fully winged. Body, legs and antennae brown, antennal segments III–IV paler, II dark brown; fore wing light brown. Antennae 9-segmented, segment VI with a complete slightly oblique suture; segments III–IV with small forked sense cone. Head without long setae; ocellar setae III arising well outside ocellar triangle; maxillary palps 3-segmented. Pronotum without long setae. Metanotum reticulate, median setae well behind anterior margin, campaniform sensilla present. Fore wing with veinal setae shorter than half of wing width, first vein with 2 setae on distal half, second vein with 8–10 equally spaced setae. Abdominal tergites medially with no sculpture lines; tergite VIII with complete posteromarginal comb of long slender microtrichia.
Male with sternites III–VII each with small round to oval pore plate.
Almost 80 species from around the world are currently placed in Anaphothrips, but only two are established in Britain, with a further five species recorded from elswhere in Europe (zur Strassen, 2003). There are 17 Anaphothrips species known from North America, all living on grasses (Nakahara, 1995), and 43 from Australia, mostly living on plants other than grasses (Mound & Masumoto, 2009). A. badius is similar in structure to the more common obscurus, but is a much darker species.
Presumably feeding and breeding on leaves, and associated with Phragmites [Poaceae] and Carex [Cyperaceae], but the larvae have not been recorded in Britain.
Collected at only four locations in England between 1912 and 1961, including the type population from Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire (Williams, 1913), and also West London, Oxfordshire and Northumberland (Mound et al., 1976). Recorded in Central and Eastern Europe south from Norway, and also from Spain.
THRIPIDAE - THRIPINAE
Anaphothrips badius (Williams)
Euthrips badius Williams, 1913: 221
Anaphothrips badius var. pectens Bagnall, 1923: 57
Mound LA & Masumoto M. (2009) Australian Thripinae of the Anaphothrips genus-group (Thysanoptera), with three new genera and thirty-three new species. Zootaxa 2042: 1–76.
Mound LA, Morison GD, Pitkin BR & Palmer JM (1976) Thysanoptera. Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects 1 (11): 1–79.
Nakahara S (1995) Review of the Nearctic species of Anaphothrips (Thysanoptera: Thripidae). Insecta Mundi 9 (3-4): 221–241.
Williams CB (1913) Records and descriptions of British Thysanoptera. Journal of Economic Biology 8 (4): 216–230.
zur Strassen R (2003) Die terebranten Thysanopteren Europas und des Mittelmeer-Gebietes. Die Tierwelt Deutschlands 74: 1–271.
