Invertebrates Flora Botanical gardens Civil societies Sri Lanka is a tropical island situated close to the southern tip of India.
[4] The name Embioptera ("lively wings") comes from Greek, εμβιος, embios meaning "lively" and πτερον, pteron meaning "wing", a name that has not been considered to be particularly descriptive for this group of fliers,[5] perhaps instead referring to their remarkable speed of movement both forward and backward.
[11] The checklist of New was advanced with the full description of two subfamilies Epipsocidae and Pseudocaeciliidae, from Sri Lanka.
Thrips species feed on a large variety of plants and animals by puncturing them and sucking up the contents.
A large number of thrips species are considered pests, because they feed on plants with commercial value.
In the right conditions, like indoor grow rooms or greenhouses, many species can exponentially increase in population size and form large swarms because of a lack of natural predators, making them an irritation to humans.
[11] In 1997, Oda et al. rediscovered and updated the thrip diversity, but with small collections from Sri Lanka.
Currently, thrips documented within Sri Lanka included to 3 families - Aeolothripidae, Thripidae, and Phlaeothripidae, with 46 genera and 78 species.
[30] Also called sedge-flies or rail-flies, they are small moth-like insects having two pairs of hairy membranous wings.
They are closely related to Lepidoptera (moths and butterflies) which have scales on their wings, and the two orders together form the superorder Amphiesmenoptera.
Caddisflies have aquatic larvae and are found in a wide variety of habitats such as streams, rivers, lakes, ponds, spring seeps, and temporary waters (vernal pools).
[31] The larvae of many species use silk to make protective cases of gravel, sand, twigs or other debris.
The caddisfly diversity in Sri Lanka is fairly studied from British times to present day.
Adults in most of their lives are spent as endoparasites in other insects, such as bees, wasps, leafhoppers, silverfish, and cockroaches.
[11] The first scientific observation and detailed work on strepsipterans of Sri Lanka was done by Kathirithamby in 1994.
The three cosmopolitan species of lice live within the humans, on head, body and pubic region.
They are commonly known as scorpionflies, due to enlarged genitals possessed by males, which resemble the stinger of a scorpion.