Good Thrips?

Not all thrips are bad!  Here is a great example of identifying your insects first before you spray.  You might just be helping your pest enemies get a stronger foothold.  The following publication helps identify a beneficial thrips that you might find in your production area that might be doing some good.  These thrips eat, other pest thrips like chili thrips, spider mites, whitefly eggs and psyllid eggs.  For more information please check out the new publication below.

 Vespiform Thrips, Franklinothrips vespiformis Crawford, is a predatory thrips with a pantropical distribution. The distinctive red, humped-back larvae and fast-moving ant-like adults are predaceous on small arthropods. In addition to being easily mistaken for an ant, this beneficial thrips is unusual in that it constructs a silken cocoon within which it pupates. Males of this species are rare. This species is sold for use as a biological control agent in botanical gardens, zoos, interior landscapes, research greenhouses, nurseries with ornamental plants as well as outdoors in subtropical regions. This 4-page fact sheet was written by Runqian Mao, Yingfang Xiao, and Steven P. Arthurs, and published by the UF Department of Entomology and Nematology, March 2015. (Photo credit: Runqian Mao, UF/IFAS)
http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/in1083