Thrips Revisited!

Remember these guys? From this post? I thought they were some kind of weird beetle, and they turned out to be "thrips" an insect group that I know almost nothing about, in fact I don't even know how to refer to a single insect--they're always thrips, never a single thrip. I know they are horticultural pests in some contexts, other than that, nothing.

On the advice of americanbeetles, I collected some and sent them to an expert on the taxa, Dr. Laurence Mound, based in Canberra Australia. This week I received a nice card from Dr. Mound:

"Many thanks for the thrips!
Hoplothrips karnyi
But I have never seen such an exposed colony. The species is common in the eastern States and is probably the same as a common species in Europe although that is usually given another name."

So that's very cool. Googling the species name turns up this page, from "Thrips of California," which elucidates the species further:
"This species is not known from California, but is included here as one specimen has been seen from British Colombia. H. karnyi from North America is possibly the same species as the European H. fungi Zetterstedt, and neither of these can be distinguished satisfactorily from H. orientalis Ananthakrishnan from India, Australia and New Zealand (Mound & Walker, 1986). H. karnyi was treated by Stannard (1968) as a synonym of H. beachae (Hinds), but that species has an elongate pelta similar to Hoplandrothrips species and also has shorter maxillary stylets that do not meet medially in the head. Species in the genus Hoplothrips frequently exhibit considerable sexual dimorphism, males vary in size with structural characters being allometric, and many species produce winged and wingless morphs. As a result, identification is difficult of the 150 species from around the world that have been placed in the genus, and there are no available identification keys."

Amazing. When I was younger I assumed--since there were encyclopedias full of apparently settled knowledge--that biologists pretty much had all the species of life figured out. The more I learn, the more unclear it appears to be. I love the fact that this swarm of insects on a street tree in Boston is as mysterious as almost any living thing could be. I am grateful to Dr. Mound and others like him, for their work studying our little planet and the unique and fragile living things that are on it. I hope that the DNA barcoding project helps us understand creatures like the thrips better than we do. Wouldn't it be nice to know if our Boston thrips were the same animals as the thrips in India, Europe, and British Columbia?
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