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National Invasive Species Information Center
U.S. Department of Agriculture
  1. Home
  2. Terrestrial Invasives
  3. Terrestrial Invertebrates
  4. Chilli Thrips

Chilli Thrips

Scientific Name

Scirtothrips dorsalis Hood, 1919 (ITIS)

Common Name

Chilli thrips, yellow tea thrips, castor thrips, Assam thrips, strawberry thrips, oriental tea thrips

Native To

Southeast Asia (Kumar et al. 2014)

Date of U.S. Introduction

First discovered in Hawaii in 1987 (Seal et al. 2010); first established population discovered in Florida in 2005 (Kumar et al. 2014)

Means of Introduction

Possibly through infested commodity shipments (Nietschke et al. 2008)

Impact

Attacks and causes significant damage to over 100 vegetable, ornamental, and fruit crops, particularly peppers, eggplant, and tomatoes (Nietschke et al. 2008)

Chilli Thrips

Chilli Thrips, adult (dorsal view of spread Scirtothrips dorsalis female removed from Capsicum chinense floating in 70% etOH)

Credit

Photo by Andrew Derksen; University of Florida

Source
Invasive.org.

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Selected Resources

The section below contains highly relevant resources for this species, organized by source.

Partnership
State and Local Government
Academic
Citations