Print Fact SheetHaplothrips juncorum

Distinguishing features

Both sexes fully winged. Body and legs brown to dark brown, fore tarsi yellow, antennal segment III yellow with light brown shadings, IV–V light brown with base paler; fore wing pale with base shaded; major setae pale. Antennae 8-segmented, segment III with 2 slender sense cones, IV with 4 similar sense cones; VIII short and broad at base. Head longer than wide; maxillary stylets about one eighth of head width apart, retracted to compound eyes, maxillary bridge short; postocular setae pointed, about 0.6 as long as dorsal length of compound eye. Pronotum with 5 pairs of major setae with apices pointed, but anteromarginal setae shorter than anteroangulars and neither pair as long as the remaining 3 pairs; epimeral sutures complete; prosternal basantra present, mesopresternum complete but slender medially. Fore wing constricted medially, with about 8 duplicated cilia; sub-basal setae short and pointed. Tergite IX setae S1 pointed, more than 0.5 as long as tube.
Male with no pore plate on sternite VIII; fore tarsal tooth present; tergite IX setae S2 short and stout; aedeagus apex similar to that of leucanthemi with pseudovirga lanceolate.

Related species

The genus Haplothrips is one of the three most species-rich genera of Thysanoptera, and currently includes about 245 species worldwide. Most of these species come from the Holarctic or the Old World tropics, with 80 listed from Europe and 14 from Britain. No Haplothrips species is known to be endemic to the Neotropics, although a few are native to southern South America (Mound & Zapater, 2003). Haplothrips species are largely phytophagous, particularly associated with the flowers of Asteraceae and Poaceae, but some are predatory (Mound & Minaei, 2007). Haplothrips juncorum is unusual within this genus in having the maxillary stylets close together medially in the head, this condition being shared only with statices amongst Haplothrips species in Britain.

Biological data

Breeding in the flowers of species of Juncus [Juncaceae] and Bolboschoenus [Cyperaceae].

Distribution data

Described from specimens collected in Oxfordshire (Bagnall, 1913a), and found in Britain mainly in the south of England with one record from South Wales. However, it has also been taken as far north as Cumbria in the west (Mound et al., 1976) and Yorkshire in the east, as well as from County Dublin in the Republic of Ireland (O'Connor, 2008). Elsewhere in Europe it is known south from Denmark to the Mediterranean. 

Family name

PHLAEOTHRIPIDAE - PHLAEOTHRIPINAE

Species name

Haplothrips juncorum Bagnall

Original name and synonyms

Haplothrips juncorum Bagnall, 1913: 227
Haplothrips juncicola Bagnall, 1932: 165

References

Bagnall R. S. (1913a) On two new species of Haplothrips new to the British fauna. Entomologist’s Monthly Magazine 49: 227–228.

Mound LA & Minaei K (2007) Australian insects of the Haplothrips lineage (Thysanoptera – Phlaeothripinae). Journal of Natural History 41: 2919–2978.

Mound LA, Morison GD, Pitkin BR & Palmer JM (1976) Thysanoptera. Handbooks for the Identification of British Insects 1 (11): 1–79.

Mound LA & Zapater MC (2003) South American Haplothrips species (Thysanoptera, Phlaeothripidae), with a new species of biological control interest to Australia against weedy Heliotropium amplexicaule (Boraginaceae). Neotropical Entomology 32: 437–442.

O’Connor JP (2008) A review of the Irish thrips (Thysanoptera). Irish Naturalists’ Journal 29: 20–24.