Pseudanaphothrips casuarinae Mound & Palmer, 1990

Mound, Laurence A. & Tree, Desley J., 2025, Species confusion in the Australian inflorescence-living genus Pseudanaphothrips (Thysanoptera, Thripidae), Zootaxa 5696 (3), pp. 425-436 : 430-432

publication ID

https://doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.5696.3.7

publication LSID

lsid:zoobank.org:pub:112ABB25-A36D-45A5-8FFA-8B9E2C7F1879

persistent identifier

https://treatment.plazi.org/id/03EF8F69-FFAE-FF82-B98E-6B4FFBF61892

treatment provided by

Plazi

scientific name

Pseudanaphothrips casuarinae Mound & Palmer
status

 

Pseudanaphothrips casuarinae Mound & Palmer View in CoL

( Figs 15 View FIGURES 10–17 , 22 View FIGURES 18–26 )

Pseudanaphothrips casuarinae Mound & Palmer, 1990: 3 View in CoL .

Described originally from both sexes taken on Casuarina paludosa View in CoL near Victor Harbour, South Australia, this species has been found widely in eastern Australia, with specimens studied from Tasmania and Kangaroo Island in southern Australia to southeastern Queensland. Most of these specimens were taken from the male cones of various species of Casuarina View in CoL and Allocasuarina View in CoL , with P. casuarinae View in CoL appearing to be strictly specific to these plants for population maintenance.

At a single site, in the National Botanic Gardens, Canberra, some indication of the life-history of this species could be deduced. Larvae were found in April 2014 in large numbers in the leaf-litter beneath trees of a species of Allocasuarina . Adults were also found with the larvae in this litter, but all of them were pale – presumably teneral. In contrast, adults taken a few weeks later from the male cones of the same trees were more extensively brown. It seems reasonable to conclude that P. casuarinae larvae fall to the ground to pupate, and the mature adult body colour is not achieved for many days after emergence from pupae.

This conclusion raises a more general problem for distinguishing species on details of body colour of individual specimens, or even samples. In the absence of life-history information such differences may not always be reliable. Even the colour of the fore wings of P. casuarinae seems to vary, with the base of these wings commonly being sharply pale, although more rarely individuals have been found with uniformly brown fore wings.

Because of these colour variations, P. casuarinae is here interpreted as a variable species. The type specimens, and others collected from Allocasuarina paludosa in southern Australia, are usually brown to dark brown. In contrast, specimens studied from Casuarina equisetifolia in Southeast Queensland are much paler. Moreover, adults seem to disperse widely from their breeding hosts. On one occasion, a long series of pale females with two males was taken from various flowers on Moreton Island, although this is a site where Casuarina trees grow in abundance.

Females have the pronotal posteromarginal median setae small, little larger than the submedian pairs. The comb on tergite VIII is long and regular in both sexes, and pale females are similar in many character states to females of the common species P. frankstoni . However, the posteromedian sculpture lines on the metanotum are never closely approximated ( Fig. 22 View FIGURES 18–26 ), although the pattern of orientation of these sculpture lines varies slightly between populations. The male sternal pore plates are consistently small, no more than 5 to 6 microns in diameter, and sometimes even smaller or difficult to see ( Fig. 15 View FIGURES 10–17 ). The pale males are similar to those of P. aureolus , but in that species the lines at the posterior of the metanotum are narrower and closely convergent.

Kingdom

Animalia

Phylum

Arthropoda

Class

Insecta

Order

Thysanoptera

Family

Thripidae

Genus

Pseudanaphothrips

Loc

Pseudanaphothrips casuarinae Mound & Palmer

Mound, Laurence A. & Tree, Desley J. 2025
2025
Loc

Pseudanaphothrips casuarinae

Mound, L. A. & Palmer, J. M. 1990: 3
1990
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