Practical application of the ITS-RFLP method for rapid identification of thrips larvae
M Stuckey1 and J Funderburk1
1North Florida Research and Education Centre, University of Florida, Quincy, Florida, USA.
Correspondence: mlstuckey@mail.ifas.ufl.edu
Effective management and control of pest thrips is crucial to many agricultural projects, and accurate and rapid identification of adults and larvae is important in determining the early stages of infestations. This had previously been difficult, until the development of an interactive, computerized identification system (Moritz G et al. 2004. Pest thrips of the world: an identification and information system using molecular and microscopical methods), which combines morphological and molecular methods. The molecular component relies on restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions of ribosomal DNA. We evaluated the utility and effectiveness of this ITS-RFLP method of identifying thrips for both a laboratory and a field based study.
