SPRING NUMBER 3 
Described from one female. No food plant given. Collected by Mr. 
E. G. Smythe, Rio Piedros, Porto Rico, Oct. 7, 1919. 
Sericothrips portoricensis, sp. nov. 
Female:—Color: Head and prothorax deep brown, pterothorax and 
Ist abdominal segment orange brown; abdominal segments 2-5 with a 
longitudinally median tan colored stripe occupying about 1/4 the width 
of the segments, remainder of segments brown, segment six tan, segments 
7-10 dark brown; fore and middle femora tan, hind femora nearly as dark 
brown as abdominal segments 7-10, tibiae light tan, tarsi lemon yellow; 
antennal segments 1 and 2 straminious, base of 3 gray, remainder of an- 
tennae brown, shading from light lemon on 3rd segment to dark brown on 
segments 6-8 with bases of 4 and 5 gray brown. Wings deep brown, basal 
fourth (except scale which is brown) gray, a gray cross band in the fourth 
fifth; hind wings gray except for dark brown median vein. 
Head very short, scarcely 1/4 as long as broad, surface very finely 
striate; eyes dark blackish brown, occupying slightly more than half the 
width of head and nearly its entire length, pilose with a few conspicuous 
hairs, facets large; ocelli equidistant, large, margined inwardly, with very 
dark orange crescents; post-ocellar spines large and prominent, a few 
small spines on cheeks, four spines across front below anterior ocellus a 
little larger than setae between facets of compound eyes; mouth cone long, 
reaching across prosternum, stout, cone-shaped with sides slightly convex; 
antennae normal except for the branched sense cones which are especially 
large and thick. 
Prothorax only about half as long as wide, quite thickly covered with 
fine transversely anastomosing lines, sides convex; each posterior margin 
bears a very stout long spine a short distance from lateral margain, between 
these two spines there is a chitinous thickening very close to posterior 
margin; this chitinous thickening extends cephalad from each spine in an 
arcuate line about 2/3 across the pronotum, each side line boing 
joined across the front by a concave thickening; the enclosed pronotal area 
is somewhat darker than the remainder of the segment and bears two 
small spines on each side, one at the anterior angle and the other midway 
the lateral margin; the prothorax bears two pairs of small spines on its 
anterior margin, the first spine of each pair being about 1/8 the width 
of the anterior margin from the anterior angle and the second spine about 
1/8 this width distant from the first. The mesoscutum is very thickly 
covered with finely anastomosing lines and bears six small but distant 
spines, one near each lateral angle, one each side the meson about midway 
between poterior and anterior margins, the other two spines stand, one 
on each side about half-way between lateral line through preceding two 
spines and posterior margin but about twice as far from meson as the 
preceding; the metascutum is longitudinally striate and bears four spines 
in its anterior margin somewhat smaller than those on pronotum, metas- 
eutetlum smooth. Legs not especially long; wings normal to the genus, at 
the base about 1/9 as broad as long, at the middle about 1/18 as broad 
as long, Costa bears about 24 spines, fore vein about 20, and sometimes 2 
on hind vein near tip. 
