Phenicothrips Bhatti

Phenicothrips Bhatti, 1995: 107 . Replacement name for Phaenothrips Priesner, not Phenothrips Ananthakrishnan, 1968 .

The type species of this genus is Gynaikothrips daetymon Karny, and there are a further seven species listed in the genus, all from southeast Asia and Indonesia. However, as indicated by Okajima (2006), Phenicothrips is scarcely separable from Liothrips . Some characters used by Bhatti (1995) to diagnose the genus are variable and show clines, including lengths of antennal sense cones and postocular setae. For example, Liothrips vitivorus shares some character states with Phenicothrips including short postocular setae and widely separated maxillary stylets, but the antennal sense cones are not very long. Despite this problem, Phenicothrips species in general share the following character states: head longer than wide, postocular setae short, maxillary stylets wide apart, antennal segments III & IV with long slender sense cones, fore tarsal absent in both sexes, and the tube shorter than the head.