Reproduction
After discovering
that the life cycle from birth to adult only takes less than a
month to complete, I can see how a rapid greenhouse thrips
infestation can take place. The greenhouse thrips reproduces
very rapidly and the majority of the time the males are not part
of the reproduction process due to they are very rare. By means
of parthenogenesis females lay their unfertilized eggs into
slits of the host plant, made by their ovipositor (Bain et al.,
2009). The female can lay up to 50 kidney shaped eggs, which are
approximately 0.3mm in length at a time,
but on average only lay
10-25 (Bain et al., 2009). Under favorable conditions the eggs
will then hatch within 17-20 days after being laid (North
Carolina State University). After birth it will take roughly 13
days to complete the two larval instar phases, then close to 5
days for the prepupal and pupal stages and finally the adult
greenhouse thrips can feed and reproduce for the rest of its 7
week life span (North Carolina University). You can learn more
about this
here! This thrips has what
is called gradual metamorphosis (Dunn, 1996). The newborns,
which resemble the adults in body form lack wings and are
translucent white but slowly turn to a brownish yellow color
through their life cycle (Bain et al., 2009). Something very
interesting that I found about the young is that they are fairly
slow movers and in order to deter predator from eating them they
possess a drop of clear excrement on top of their abdomen, which
due to the increase in size falls off upon entering adulthood
(Bain et al., 2009).