Thrips of Timor Leste
Introduction
Timor-Leste is near the southern extremity of the biogeographical region known as Malesia that extends from Peninsular Malaysia in the north to New Guinea in the south (Mound 2019). The flora and fauna of this region is one of the richest in the world, but the insects known as thrips have been very little studied, particularly from the many territories that comprise Indonesia (Sartiami & Mound 2013). Thrips include several major crop pests, and the objective here is to provide a system to facilitate identification of such pests and to distinguish them from the many species that are likely to live in Timor Leste (see also Zhang et al. 2020). .
Thrips are commonly thought of as pestiferous, damaging crops by their feeding and transmission of serious plant viruses, and commonly flower-living. However, this is a very incomplete view of the biological diversity within this Order (Mound, 2004). At least 50% of the known species of thrips feed only on fungi, either in leaf litter or on dead branches (Morse & Hoddle, 2006), a considerable number feed only on green leaf tissues with some species inducing galls (Crespi et al., 2004), and a few thrips are predators of other arthropods (Mound & Teulon, 1995; Mound & Reynaud, 2005).
Worldwide, about 6300 species are currently recognised, with another 1600 species-group names in synonymy (ThripsWiki, 2020). The thrips fauna of tropical areas remains poorly known. From the islands of the Indonesian archipelago at least 400 species have been recorded, but many of these cannot be recognised from their descriptions that date from 100 years ago. Moreover, some thrips species may disperse widely on the winds, and a few of these are known to have a wide distribution from Australia in the south to China in the north (Mound & Tree, 2011, 2018; Zhang et al., 2018).
References
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 (2004) Thysanoptera – Diversity and Interactions. Annual Review of Entomology 50: 247 – 269.
Mound LA (2019) Identification of Haplothrips species from Malesia (Thysanoptera, Phlaeothripinae). Zootaxa 4623 (1): 041–050. [ https://www.mapress.com/j/zt/article/view/zootaxa.4623.1.3/27039 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 (2018) Asia-Australia distribution patterns among species of Mystrothrips (Thysanoptera, Phlaeothripinae), with two new species. Zootaxa 4526 (3): 347 – 357. [ https://www.mapress.com/j/zt/article/view/zootaxa.4526.3.4/17189.pdf]
Sartiami D & Mound LA (2013) Identification of the terebrantian thrips (Insecta, Thysanoptera) associated with cultivated plants in Java, Indonesia. Zookeys 306: 1-21. [ https://zookeys.pensoft.net/article/3177/.pdf]
ThripsWiki (2020) ThripsWiki - providing information on the World's thrips. http://thrips.info/wiki/Main_Page date accessed
Zhang SM, Mound LA, & Hastings A (2020) Thysanoptera-Thripidae Chinensis. Thripidae Genera from China. Lucidcentral.org, Identic Pty Ltd, Queensland, Australia. [ https://keys.lucidcentral.org/keys/v3/thysanoptera_chinensis/.pdf]
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. [https://www.mapress.com/j/zt/article/view/zootaxa.4418.4.3/14683/.pdf]