Megalothrips rotundus Guo, Cao & Feng, 2010

Okajima, Shûji & Masumoto, Masami, 2025, Two idolothripine genera, Bactrothrips and Megalothrips (Thysanoptera, Phlaeothripidae), from Asia between India and Taiwan, with descriptions of two new species, Zootaxa 5696 (4), pp. 491-516 : 511-512

Megalothrips rotundus Guo, Cao & Feng

Megalothrips rotundus Guo et al., 2010: 733–735 .

M. rotundus was described from Hubei Province, China, based on 3 females, but we have not examined these. Moreover, unfortunately, the original description may be incomplete with some incomprehensible substances, and the specific definition of rotundus could not be understood satisfactorily. According to the original description, head is very long as ‘3.26 times as long as width of eyes (this may be width across eyes)’ and almost as long as tube, but the text figure of the head seems to be not so long, at least shorter than 3.0 times. Usually, congeners have the head 2.0–2.5 times as long as broad, and shorter than the tube in females. There is a possibility that the head length in this description included mouth-cone length. Similarly, antennal segment III is 10.2 times as long as wide in the description but is not so long in the text figure. This may be due to simple measurement error, because the width of antennal segment III in the measurements is much narrower than other segments. Fortunately, however, the notopleural suture of rotundus is clearly drawing, and the noto-epimeral suture is almost completely lost, but the noto-episternal suture remains fully.

There are at least two more undetermined Megalothrips species, apart from the new species described below, collected from Indonesia, Borneo, Vietnam and Taiwan in the collection of TUA; all of these have complete noto-episternal suture and all are known only from females. Unfortunately, however, the morphological information of M. rotundus , which is undoubtedly related to these specimens, is poor, and it is impossible to discriminate them at species level at present.