Nutrition

In order to eat and get nutrients, thrips use their mouth to puncture the cells on the leaves of flowers surface and suck all the juices out. The flower thrip actually has a symbiosis relationship, which means they don’t harm or benefit the host, with the gut bacteria Erwinia that are obtained from the nutrients and juices sucked out of the fruits and flowers. The thrips nutrition also depends on if it can get its nutrients and avoid pesticides that are sprayed over their food sources (Vries, Jacobs, Sabelis, Menken, Beeuwar 2004).

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