meshing around
Scirtothrips dorsalis is small even by thrips standards. A large female chili thrips is pictured above with a distant cousin, Frankliniella occidentalis, the "western flower thrips", on a sample of "thrips proof screen". While this screen is usually sufficient to keep all but the most persistent and determined of flower thrips off of your plants, you can see that a chili thrips could potentially squeeze between the gaps offered by the nylon, and sneak inside. This is an important finding because some rose growers use this screen to protect their precious flowers from thrips, and it turns out that chili thrips also like to feed on the buds of growing roses. If growers are faced with an infestation of chili thrips, they will have to find and use other methods to protect their flowers.
On the other side of the coin, I may be able to use this mesh to create an exclusion barrier for flower thrips to determine if they in turn are excluding chili thrips from adult flowers through competition (and possibly predation!), or whether my thrips just like the growing buds of flowers and leave them once the flower matures.