Diagnostic characters

Membership of this subfamily is diagnosed by the presence of a prominent "lyre-shaped" metathoracic endofurca that is presumably associated with muscles that enable the adults to jump suddenly. The fore wing of many species has the apex rounded without a prominent terminal seta, and the costal cilia commonly arise slightly ventrally rather than at the apparent anterior margin. The surface of many species bears complex reticulation (Wang et al., 2019), and the median tergal setae are commonly closer together than their length.

Diversity

Worldwide, there are 12 genera and 105 species listed in the Dendrothripinae (ThripsWiki, 2020), with six genera and 19 species recorded from Australia (ABRS 2020). A similar enlarged, lyre-shaped, metathoracic furca occurs in some species of Panchaetothripinae, but this is probably associated with the ability of adults to jump rather than an indication of any systematic relationship.

Distribution data

Amost all Dendrothripinae are from the Old World, with just one small genus of five species endemic to the Americas.

Biological data

Breeding on the leaves, usually the older leaves, of Dicotyledonous plants, with a very few species associated with Poaceae.

References

Australian Biological Resources Study. https://biodiversity.org.au/afd/taxa/Dendrothripinae/statistics

ThripsWiki (2020) ThripsWiki - providing information on the World's thrips. Available from: http://thrips.info/wiki/Main_Page [accessed 29.x.2019].

Wang ZH, Mound LA & Tong XL (2019) Character state variation within Dendrothrips (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) with a revision of the species from China. Zootaxa 4590 (2): 231–248.