Thrips constitute a single order of insects, the Thysanoptera with around 6500 described species
in two suborders, nine families and six subfamilies across the world (ThripsWiki, 2023).
Thysanoptera is well distributed worldwide in temperate and tropical zones, but they are more
diverse in the warm tropical areas than in the colder regions (Iftikhar et al., 2016). Thrips are rarely noticeable due to their small size. The adults have four slender wings fringed with long marginal cilia, from which the name Thysanoptera is derived, but their most remarkable feature is the asymmetry of mouth parts, possessing only the left mandible. The larvae have a pair of tarsal claws and in the adults, these are modified to a pair of spoon-shaped sclerites between which lies the bladder like arolium that can be hydrostatically dilated (Mound and Heming,1991). The life cycle is in between holometabolous and hemimetabolous insects; the feeding immature ones are larvae, and all species have more than one pupal stadium (Moritz, 1995).
Major works on Indian fauna of Thysanoptera include Ramakrishna and Margabandhu (1940);
Shumsher (1947); Priesner (1951); Priesner and Seshadri (1952); Patel and Patel (1953);
Seshadri and Ananthakrishnan (1954); Ananthakrishnan (1961); Ananthakrishnan and Sen (1980); Sen et al. (1988); Bhatti (1990); Tyagi and Kumar (2016), and Rachana and Varatharajan (2017). Through this database we are attempting to document the diversity of terebrantian thrips in India with diagnosis and illustrations so as to facilitate the researchers across the country and abroad to appreciate the biodiversity and also for easy identification. This database features the
diagnostics of Indian species of terebrantian thrips.
