Thrips are a diverse group of organisms with about 6,000 recognized species worldwide. They are distributed in every continent of the world including the Antarctic, with an abundance of tropical species. Their food habits are diverse ranging from mainly plant and fungus feeding to a few animal feeding predatory thrips species. Thrips are very tiny (majority less than 3mm long or less), slender insects, with short life period and high reproductive rates that aid in their rapid increase in population size. They are key pest of various staple food crops, vegetables, ornamentals, commercial cash crops etc. causing direct feeding damage, resulting in loss of yield and quality and indirect damage as the only vectors of plant pathogenic tospoviruses. However, some thrips species are also beneficial as predators and pollinators.

Several thrips species are quarantine pests influencing global trade of crop produces and impacting the socio-economics of many farming communities. The ability of thrips to cross international borders is primarily due to their small size, ability to hide in enclosed spaces and lack of capacity among quarantine agencies to properly monitor their movement. Timely and correct identification of these cryptic creatures is the pre-requisite for effective quarantine and development of integrated pest management (IPM) strategies.

Constraints to timely and correct identification are due to the ever decreasing taxonomic expertise globally and the regional disparities in availability of species diversity information and the constraints are not restricted to thrips. Recent advancement in modern taxonomy towards development of digital taxonomic keys/tools running on information management software applications such as the Lucid keys has aided to address these constraints. Expert contributions from renowned thrips taxonomists like Professors Laurence Mound and Gerald Moritz in this direction have resulted in the development of Lucid based thrips identification tools for key pest thrips occurring in the world. Because of the differences in diversity of thrips occurring at regional scale, there is a need to complement this already available tool with region specific tools. Such region specific identification tools are presently available for Australia, Europe and North America.

The new tool entitled "Identification and information tool for thrips in East Africa" is a significant step in this direction for enhancing the information on thrips and their natural enemy diversity in East Africa and Africa at large. So far thrips taxonomists have largely considered Africa as "a dark region" in terms of availability of thrips diversity information. The new key includes over 1,200 pictorial illustrations for more than 100 species of thrips species belonging to nearly 60 genera in the families Aeolothripidae, Phlaeothripidae and Thripidae occurring in East Africa. It also includes a key to eight Eulophid thrips parasitoids belonging to four genera occurring in East Africa, which is a first of its kind. The key is accompanied with factsheets for all the thrips and parasitoid species with detailed taxonomic, biological, biogeographical and bibliographic information targeting a wide range of end-users such as students, thrips researchers, economic entomologists, quarantine officers, IPM practitioners and conservationist in Africa and beyond.

In this regard, I would like to commend the extensive efforts and inputs from the team of authors towards developing this key which will clearly benefit a wide array of end-users in Africa and beyond.

Prof. Christian Borgemeister
Director General icipe, Nairobi