But wait, there's more! The very charming world expert on thrips (http://www.csiro.au/people/Laurence.Mound.html) works down the hall from me, and has two very useful thoughts on these photos: 1) They're probably Hoplothrips or a closely-related genus (Hoplandrothrips linked below is a good candidate)
2) Although massing behavior like this is rare in thrips, it has been previously documented in a South American species-- several adults tend a huge mass of nymphs, guarding them at night in small tree crevices and herding them, by day, over to delicious lichen or fungus patches where the adults stand guard, gaucho-like, over the dense herd of spore-feeding babies.
3)FURTHERMORE, the red color is a totally unaddressed mystery in thrips. There are many groups where one concealed, under-bark species will have pale white nymphs, while its sister species feeds in exposed areas and has bright red nymphs like those shown here. That is, this weird "we're exposed so let's be red" pattern has evolved many times in thrips. Nobody knows whether they're actually toxic.
(p.s. the question of whether young thrips should be called "nymphs" or "larvae" is a very sensitive question, since thrips have independently evolved pupation. We tend to reserve "larvae" for the young of truly pupating insects (leps, bees, flies, beetles), but since thrips have their own utterly unique kind of pupation... maybe they should have "larvae" too?)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2011-10-07 03:12 am (UTC)The very charming world expert on thrips (http://www.csiro.au/people/Laurence.Mound.html) works down the hall from me, and has two very useful thoughts on these photos:
1) They're probably Hoplothrips or a closely-related genus (Hoplandrothrips linked below is a good candidate)
2) Although massing behavior like this is rare in thrips, it has been previously documented in a South American species-- several adults tend a huge mass of nymphs, guarding them at night in small tree crevices and herding them, by day, over to delicious lichen or fungus patches where the adults stand guard, gaucho-like, over the dense herd of spore-feeding babies.
3)FURTHERMORE, the red color is a totally unaddressed mystery in thrips. There are many groups where one concealed, under-bark species will have pale white nymphs, while its sister species feeds in exposed areas and has bright red nymphs like those shown here. That is, this weird "we're exposed so let's be red" pattern has evolved many times in thrips. Nobody knows whether they're actually toxic.
(p.s. the question of whether young thrips should be called "nymphs" or "larvae" is a very sensitive question, since thrips have independently evolved pupation. We tend to reserve "larvae" for the young of truly pupating insects (leps, bees, flies, beetles), but since thrips have their own utterly unique kind of pupation... maybe they should have "larvae" too?)