The diagnosis of pest thrips requires a more exacting technique and most identification keys are prepared for seasoned practitioners. In addition, the vector ability of thrips is continually evolving. Many thrips are subjected to the extended use of pesticides and have developed resistance to the chemicals. Thrips also have a unique reproductive ability that allows them to adapt to environmental changes. Furthermore, thrips are vectors of many viruses, bacteria and fungi. Many of these diseases have adapted to thrips and plants and are genetically variable making disease control difficult. Continued increases in imported plant material hightens the risk of exotic pest thrips introduction. Inspection agencies around the world are continually searching for new streamlined tools that will assist them in a quick and accurate identification of pest thrips.

     Our goal is to identify quickly and accurately important thrips pests. An early identification creates better conditions for effective control of all ontogenetic thrips stages. Morphological identification is sometimes difficult and there are no keys in existance for pre-adult stages. We have combined for the first time a visual morphological key and new ITS-RFLP molecular diagnosis to provide a new tool that will quickly identify adults, pre-adult stages including ready-to-hatch eggs of pest thrips. The ITS-RFLP results for each species has been digitalized into a data base within the key. This data base can be linked from within the morphological key or directly from the start of the key.

Two Methods of Identification:

Morphological

Molecular

 

University of Halle-Wittenberg, Halle (Saale), Germany
University of California, Davis, USA
CSIRO, Canberra, Australia
USDA, Beltsville, Maryland, USA
LucID-Team, CPITT, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australien