Pseudodendrothrips Schmutz, 1913

Rasool, Iftekhar, Mound, Laurence A., Soliman, Ahmed M. & Aldhafer, Hathal M., 2021, The Dendrothripinae (Thysanoptera, Thripidae) of SaudiArabia, withnew records one new species, and revised status of Pseudodendrothrips stuardoi (Moulton), Zootaxa 4999 (3), pp. 219-227 : 222-223

Pseudodendrothrips Schmutz

Pseudodendrothrips Schmutz, 1913: 998 .

There are 21 species listed in this genus (ThripsWiki 2021), mainly from the Asian tropics. Four of these are recorded from the Arabian Peninsula (zur Strassen & van Harten 2006, 2008): P. aegyptiacus and P. ficus from Yemen, and P. ornatissimus and P. mori from UAE. We here record for the first time from Saudi Arabia the two species P. aegyptiacus and P. stuardoi . In this country the genus can be distinguished from other Dendrothripinae genera by the following character states: hind tarsi more than 0.5 as long as hind tibiae; antennae 8 or 9–segmented with forked sense cone on III–IV; abdominal tergites with median pair S1 setae close to each other and much longer than distance between their bases ( Mound & Tree 2016).

One species in this genus, P. mori , is associated with the leaves of Morus spp. ( Masumoto & Okajima 2017). This thrips was described from Japan but is also recorded from China and Korea ( Kudo 1984), northern Italy (zur Strassen & Marullo 2003), Iran ( Alavi et al. 2014) and is well established on Morus alba in parts of north America ( Stannard 1968). Moulton (1930) described a new genus and species from Chile, Graphidothrips stuardoi , on the leaves of Ficus carica . Subsequently, the genus Graphidothrips was synonymized with Pseudodendrothrips by Bhatti (1969), but the status of the species, stuardoi , remained unclear. It has been listed in ThripsWiki (2021) as a synonym of Pseudodendrothrips mori , although that synonymy was never formally published. The decision was based on an examination (by the present second author) of paratypes of stuardoi at the Natural History Museum, London, together with specimens at the Australian National Insect Collection, Canberra that were collected in Chile from the leaves of Ficus carica .

The present studies have revealed character states that distinguish stuardoi from mori , and thus enable the identification of Pseudodendrothrips specimens on Ficus carica from Saudi Arabia. Moreover, descriptions and illustrations of P. mori in Stannard (1968) and Kudo (1984) conflict with the original description and specimens of P. stuardoi . The latter species has been found feeding and breeding across the central and Southwestern provinces of Saudi Arabia, but always on the leaves of F. carica . This tree is native to the Middle East and Mediterranean countries ( Stover et al. 2007) and was introduced to South America around 1520 ( Botti & Muchnik 1998). Presumably the thrips was introduced with the plant material. This host association with Ficus carica contrasts with that of P. mori that is reported only from the leaves of Morus spp. ( Stannard 1968; Kudo 1984; Alavi et al. 2014; Masumoto & Okajima 2017).

The record of P. ficus from Yemen (zur Strassen & van Harten 2006), based on two females, should probably be further checked. According to the original description ( Hartwig 1948) this South African species has the hind tarsi 0.8 as long as the hind tibiae, as in P. stuardoi , but the mouth cone is illustrated as much shorter and the abdomen described as brown.