Heliothrips haemorrhoidalis Bouche

Heliothrips haemorrhoidalis (Bouché)

(Figs 1, 4, 8, 13)

Judging from the presence of males in samples from southern Brazil (Mound 1976) and southern Peru (Mound &Marullo 1996), this species presumably originated in the southwestern part of the Amazon basin. However, it is now found worldwide, and breeds on the leaves of many plant species in a wide range of families. Living mainly on older leaves, particularly of plants that are growing sub-optimally (Mound 1997), it avoids plants with trichomes on the leaves (Scott-Brown & Simmonds 2006). The body colour varies with the degree of maturity, newly emerged females commonly have a yellow abdomen contrasting with the dark brown head and thorax, but the body of mature adults is dark brown, contrasting with the yellow legs. Males are smaller than females, with legs all pale and pore plates on sternites III–VII similar in shape and size to males of similis. The lectotype of the subspecies angustior, collected at “Paramaribo, Surinam ”, was studied at the Senckenberg Museum, Frankfurt, and has the metascutal triangle prolonged onto the metascutellum. This lectotype is accepted as the reference specimen for the name of this widespread pest thrips. Full nomenclatural details of the many synonyms of haemorrhoidalis are available in ThripsWiki (2015).