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We're getting attacked in our smoking area by these tiny little bugs.

Rocketdork (being the kind of guy he is), caught one and took it into the lab, where he magnified it about 600 times and took pictures.


(click here for a larger image)

The pinkish lines you see behind the bug are the ridges on Rocketdork's fingers (these bastards are tiny!!).

What are these?

bio wrote:where he magnified it about 600 times

That would be 60 times...10x on the eye pieces and 6x on the scope

I wish one of them had their wings spread out, but I am 99% (:edit - 100% after looking at the larger pics) sure those are a species of thrips. These guys have kinda feathery/fringed wings, and most of them feed on plants, with some species affecting tree fruit crops and therefore worthy of interest. They got funky looking heads and even funkier mouthparts (they are asymmetrical).

Here is some more info on thrips:

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthropoda ... ptera.html

http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/course/ent425/ ... hrips.html

BTW, Nice job with the pics, Rocketdork!

It sure looks a lot like it. The descriptions of the mouth are particularly compelling. "anteriorly forming a conical mouth opening." That sounds a lot like what I saw in the microscope. I would swear that the wings are not the feathery things described, but solid and veined.

I'll catch another one (they are slow) and get some with the wings spread if I can. They are so small that it is hard to manipulate them.

I have lots of practice taking photos of small things, I do it frequently for work. Its mostly solder joints or contamination on a circuit board though.

yeah. Like I said, the bigger pic gave it away for sure. You'd need some fine needles to tease out the wings w/o breaking them.

If you got a good view of the mouthparts, I am impressed They are what we term "hypognathous", meaning that they sit on the underside of the head. Your right hand pic gives a bit of the detail there.

What sort of scope/camera rig do you have at the lazy I?

I'll still try to catch the wing view...don't know if we have any needles fine enough...but I'll try to find something. The smallest tweezers that I can find have points almost as big as the bug...

I didn't get a good view of the mouth parts, would have needed even greater magnification for that, but the general description fit. It was conical, on the anterior part of the head, but I couldn't really see any detail.

We have lots of scopes for soldering, most are lower magnification but this one has an adjustable mag up to 6.3. The eyepieces provide an additional 10x. Its a Nikon with a CCD camera on it tied into a computer with a PCTV capture card. It USED to be hooked up to a Sony Die-sub printer, but we decided its more useful to have the photo's in electronic format. Most of the other scopes are Bausch and Lomb...Not the best quality stuff you can buy, but good enough for the soldering etc that we do...

oh, forgot to ask, why do they bite us???

Do they think we are fruits?

Heh... I knew bugfreezer was the man to ask.

What a wild and varied group we have here. Life is good!

you got bit????? Their MO is to scrape cells and suck out the contents - mebbe you did get a bit of a rash. This article mentions that they will have a go at people, guess we are a bit tasty - I take issue with the word "sting" - females of some species have bladed ovipositors, but they damage us with their mouthparts.

Some species of thrips are predatory - Aeolothripids are, as well as other species, but yours wasn't that - their wings are banded and the angle shots you had did not reflect this. The pic on the right did show their mouthparts - they were oriented much like our faces are - lower portion of the head, ventral presentation (=belly up). I'll check my entomology textbooks and see if I can find a good graphic. I had thought to send back your graphic with a bull's-eye on the mouthparts - I have it made, and I will post it sometime today.

I think this is the main thing to remember:

"The word "thrips" is both singular and plural. There is no such thing as a "thrip"."

I'm for having a little fun here - why do you think that thrips have feathery wings while most winged insects have solid wings?

And if you say "God said so", it still will not explain how/why they function.

a precursor to feathers?

I don't have a clue, something like the thingy's (technical term, don't get lost) on a butterflies wing? Don't they help in aerodynamics?

Do tell, this has been interesting.

Rocketdork wrote:a precursor to feathers?

No

Rocketdork wrote:Don't they help in aerodynamics?

In a way, yes.

I'll tell after we get a few more guessers, or if too much time has passed (NLT tomorrow). C'mon, team WWBD, guess!!!!

What'd be a suitable hint....torque.

Do they use them as fingers to maneuver and push more air with air resistance?

I think it may have to do with water or the moisture in their environment.