Thrips of Australia
Thysanoptera diversity
In 2020, the Australian Biological Resources Study web site listed from Australia a total of 971 species of Thysanoptera (ABRS 2020). About 630 of these are members of the sub-order Tubulifera, but the present work is targeted at the 340 species in the other sub-order, the Terebrantia, that includes almost all the thrips species that are known as crop pests.
Thrips are commonly thought of as pestiferous and essentially flower-living. However, this is a very incomplete view of the biological diversity within this Order. At least 50% of the known species of thrips feed only on fungi, either in leaf litter or on dead branches (Morse & Hoddle, 2006; Tree & Walter, 2012), and a considerable number feed only on green leaf tissues with some species inducing galls (Crespi et al., 2004; Mound, 2008; Tree & Mound, 2009). A few thrips are predators of other arthropods (Mound & Teulon, 1995; Mound, 2004a, 2011a; Mound & Reynaud, 2005), and in South America a few species are ectoparasitic on various Homoptera (Cavalleri & Kaminski, 2014).
Worldwide, 6100 species are recognised, with another 1600 species-group names in synonymy (ThripsWiki, 2020), but the thrips fauna of tropical areas remains poorly known. The total of 970 species recorded from Australia probably represents little more than 70% of the total thrips fauna of this continent. The fauna of Tasmania and also Western Australia remains largely unexplored, and the northern tropical fauna and its relationships to the fauna of Indonesia and the Oriental region is particularly poorly studied (Mound & Tree, 2011, 2018; Zhang et al., 2018).
References
ABRS (2020) Australian Biological Resources Study. Canberra. https://biodiversity.org.au/afd/taxa/Thysanoptera
Cavalleri A & Kaminski LA (2014) Two new ectoparasitic species of Aulacothrips Hood, 1952 (Thysanoptera: Heterothripidae) associated with ant-tended treehoppers (Hemiptera). Systematic Parasitology 89: 271 – 278.
Crespi BJ, Morris DC & Mound LA (2004) Evolution of Ecological and Behavioural Diversity: Australian Acacia Thrips as Model Organisms. Canberra: Australian Biological Resources Study & CSIRO Entomology 328 pp.
Morse JG & Hoddle MS (2006) Invasion biology of thrips. Annual Review of Entomology 51: 67 – 89.
Mound LA (2004a) Thysanoptera – Diversity and Interactions. Annual Review of Entomology 50: 247 – 269.
Mound LA (2008) Identification and host associations of some Thysanoptera Phlaeothripinae described from Australia pre-1930. Zootaxa 1714: 41 – 60. http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2008/f/zt01714p060.pdf
Mound LA (2011a) Species recognition in the genus Scolothrips (Thysanoptera, Thripidae), predators of leaf-feeding mites. Zootaxa 2797: 45 – 53. http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2011/f/zt02797p053.pdf
Mound LA & Reynaud P (2005) Franklinothrips; a pantropical Thysanoptera genus of ant-mimicking obligate predators (Aeolothripidae). Zootaxa 864: 1 – 16. [http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2005f/zt00864.pdf]
Mound LA & Teulon DAG (1995) Thysanoptera as phytophagous opportunists. pp. 3 – 20 in Parker B.L., Skinner M. & Lewis T. (eds). Thrips Biology and Management. New York : Plenum Publishing Co.
Mound LA & Tree DJ (2011) New records and four new species of Australian Thripidae (Thysanoptera) emphasise faunal relationships between northern Australia and Asia. Zootaxa 2764: 35 – 48. http://www.mapress.com/zootaxa/2011/f/zt02764p048.pdf
Mound LA & Tree DJ (2018b) Asia-Australia distribution patterns among species of Mystrothrips (Thysanoptera, Phlaeothripinae), with two new species. Zootaxa 4526 (3): 347 – 357.
ThripsWiki (2020) ThripsWiki - providing information on the World's thrips. http://thrips.info/wiki/Main_Page date accessed
Tree DJ & Mound LA (2009) Gall-induction by an Australian insect of the family Thripidae (Thysanoptera: Terebrantia). Journal of Natural History 43: 1147 – 1158.
Tree DJ & Walter GH (2012) Diversity and abundance of fungivorous thrips (Thysanoptera) associated with leaf-litter and bark across forest types and two tree genera in subtropical Australia. Journal of Natural History 46: 2897 – 2918.
Zhang SM, Wang ZH, Li YJ & Mound LA (2018) One new species, two generic synonyms and eight new records of Thripidae from China (Thysanoptera). Zootaxa 4418 (4): 370 – 378.