Onion thrips
The onion thrips is a tiny, thin yellow to brown insect, only about 1 millimetre long. It has feathery little wings. It scrapes plant leaves and sucks up the juice, leaving silvery streaks behind.
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Fun facts
In some places almost all onion thrips are females, and males are super rare.
In Hawaii, out of more than 5000 collected thrips, only 5 were males.
Mothers can lay eggs without any father at all.
The mother cuts into a leaf with a little saw at the end of her body and hides her eggs inside.
It can carry plant diseases from one plant to another.
Most asked questions about Onion thrips
?What does the onion thrips eat?
It sucks juice from onions and many other plants, like cabbage, potatoes and strawberries.
?How big is an onion thrips?
Only about 1 to 1,3 millimetres long, hard to see without a magnifying glass.
?Is the onion thrips harmful?
Not to people, but it damages crops and can spread plant viruses.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Thrips tabaci
- Group
- Other insects
- Family
- Thripidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Thysanoptera > Thripidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Potato thrips, Tobacco thrips, Cotton seedling thrips
Where the facts come from
- Thrips tabaci (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Alton N. Sparks, Jr., University of Georgia, Bugwood.org. CC BY 3.0 us, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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