Sciothrips cardamomiSciothrips cardamomiBoth sexes fully winged. Body light brown with head darkest, legs and antennal segments III–VIII largely yellow, fore wings brown with base white. Antennae 8-segmented, sense cones on III and IV forked, long and slender. Head long and projecting in front of eyes; with 2 pairs of ocellar setae, pair III on anterior margins of ocellar triangle and as long as one side of the triangle; maxillary palps 3-segmented. Pronotum with no sculpture and few discal setae, 2 pairs of long posteroangular setae, 2 pairs of posteromarginal setae. Mesonotum with anterior pair of campaniform sensilla, median setal pair small and arising in middle of sclerite. Metanotum weakly reticulate, median setae behind anterior margin; campaniform sensilla absent. Fore wing first vein with 2 setae on distal half, second vein with about 5 widely spaced setae. Abdominal tergites weakly reticulate, median setal pair small and not close together, posterolateral margins with row of dentate microtrichia; tergite VIII with complete comb of long fine microtrichia; IX with 2 pairs of campaniform sensilla, X with incomplete split. Sternites without discal setae, S1 setae on VII arising in front of margin.
Male similar to female, sternites III–VII with large pore plate; tergite IX with two pairs of short stout setae medially.
Only one species is recognised in the genus Sciothrips, and this shares many character states with species of Taeniothrips except that ocellar setae pair III arise on the margins of the ocellar triangle, and tergite IX of the males has two pairs of stout thorn-like setae.
Found on leaves and flowers of cardamon, Eletteria cardamomum, and considered a pest of this crop in India, but also found on other Zingiberaceae such as Hedychium spp.
Not a British species, but recorded once in Britain, four females caught on a sticky trap in 2008 in a greenhouse at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. A monitoring programme within the greenhouse did not discover any further individuals (Collins, 2010a). This species is probably Indian in origin but is known from China and has been introduced around the world, including Costa Rica (Mound & Marullo, 1996) and Hawaii and Oahu (Mound et al., 2017).
THRIPIDAE - THRIPINAE
Sciothrips cardamomi (Ramakrishna)
Taeniothrips cardamomi Ramakrishna, 1935: 357
Collins DW (2010a) Thysanoptera of Great Britain: a revised and updated checklist. Zootaxa 2412: 21–41.
Mound LA & Marullo R (1996) The thrips of Central and South America: an introduction (Insecta: Thysanoptera). Memoirs on Entomology, International 6: 1–487.
Mound LA, Matsunaga J, Bushe B, Hoddle MS & Wells A (2017) Adventive Thysanoptera Species on the Hawaiian Islands: New Records and Putative Host Associations. Proceedings of the Hawaiian Entomological Society 49: 17–28.
