Thrips and you!

[funnylori]

Today I was working out in a couple of vineyards, and the thrips (Thysanoptera) were out in full force!

Of course I had to be digging around in the grape vines and taking samples using a beat sheet, so I got covered.

I swear I found them in my hair, on my arms, and it felt like one was crawling in my nose. Yuck! Needless to say I took a shower.

Does anybody else seem to have problems with thrips? Either deciding to take a stroll on your body, or eating up your prized gardens?

I took a rose to school once from my mother's garden... I had about 10 of the buggers come crawling out from the petals throught the day. It realy wasn't that appealing to me.

 

[Black Widow88]

WOW! I never had that problem thank god. I've seen a few. I once found on crawling on my leg in my bed while I was writing in my diary! And they have grape vines at camp too so I see them around almost everytime I go where the grape vines are.

I never got covered in thrips though but I get covered in ants once while me and a friend went bug hunting and we found this old rotting tree stump and started tearing it apart in search of bugs. What we did find along the way were slugs, millipedes, pill bugs, and woodlice.

As we got "deeper" that when we hit the gold mine the ants started pouring out of no where! They were all over me and I made sure that none of them got down my pants!;P So still searching getting more ants on us then we found the real prize made me and my friend getting covered in ants worth it. We found......


THE QUEEN AND A BUNCH OF LARVAE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It was incredible to see a queen and her young! I wanted to get a pic of her and her babies but doing that would mean to tear her lair open and I didn't want to it that. But it was amazing!

What about the rest of you guys? How many thrips were on you?

Black Widow88

 

[Mr. Mordax]

I work in the same lab as Lori . . . we see thrips when we're examining samples under the microscope, and you usually have to squish them to avoid double counts. It's kinda gross -- especially since it's magnified 20 or 40 times.

By the way, that's awesome that you found the queen.

 

[Black Widow88]

By the way, that's awesome that you found the queen.

I know I couldn't believe what I was seing!

Black Widow88

 

[nepenthes]

Awesome! I love it when i find the queen in the wild, I would have captured her and as many workers as I could!

Ive never had problems with thripes.

 

[Black Widow88]

Awesome! I love it when i find the queen in the wild, I would have captured her and as many workers as I could!

Ive never had problems with thripes.

I would've too but due to the circumstances I couldn't. And the likes of me finding one here are 1 in a 1000,000,000.

Black Widow88

 

[dtknow]

I've picked apart even relatively small logs and never found a queen. A carpenter ant colony would be awesome!

 

[Black Widow88]

I've picked apart even relatively small logs and never found a queen. A carpenter ant colony would be awesome!

Oh I would love to invade a carpenter ant colony in search of the queen! I'm not sure what kind of ants they were but they were black and the workers kept nipping at us. Didn't bother me too much. I must've squashed about 500 off me.

Only thing is there were about 10,000 more in the nest! Does any one know what kind of ants these were? They were about the size of common garden ants and black and they bite. They were big enough ( the workers ) for me to see the mandibles trying to pierce my skin!

The little devils! It was worth it though in the end.

Black Widow88

 

[Mr. Mordax]

More thrips . . . we were out in the field again today, and they were EVERYWHERE! I never knew these guys bit.

 

[Black Widow88]

More thrips . . . we were out in the field again today, and they were EVERYWHERE! I never knew these guys bit.

Wh....wh....what?! They bite?! OMG! How come when I had some on me they didn't bite? OMG! *Faints from shock*

Black Widow88

 

[Mr. Mordax]

There's lots of species (around 5,000 according to Wikipedia), and I'm guessing not all of them bite. We get lots of Western Flower Thrips. They're plant feeders so I'm guessing they don't bite, but I wouldn't be surprised if a predatory thrips could bite.

 

[Black Widow88]

Makes sense. I didn't know that they're were that many species! *Goes to look some of them up* Thanks for the info!

Black Widow88

 

[Mr. Mordax]

The Western Flower Thrips that I mentioned is the one we think we're seeing most often when we check out the samples back at the lab. Every now and then (less than ten times in the past year) we see a black thrips of some kind, and I think Lori spotted a species that was IDed as some sort of predatory thrips (not sure what kind, though).