Female macropterous; body color mainly dark brown, with tarsi and leg articulations slightly paler; antennae mainly dark brown, with most of antennomere III and base of IV–VI yellow; wings yellowish with brown median line. Antennae 8-segmented, antennomere III much longer than the other segments. Head longer than wide, strongly projected ahead of eyes; dorsal surface with two pairs of long setae (ocellar and postocular), remaining dorsal setae short; cheeks with stout and short setae; eyes large, projected ventrally. Pronotum with 5 pairs of well-developed setae, anteromarginal and anteroangular pairs shorter than the others, posteroangular the longest; prosternal basantra present. Metathoracic sternopleural sutures absent. Abdominal tergites II–VII with 2 pairs of wing-retaining setae and several smaller accessory setae. Tube cone-shaped, about 3.3x as long as basal width, without lateral setae. All legs similar in appearance, fore tarsi without a tooth. Fore wings with many duplicated cilia.
Male macropterous. Similar to female but fore legs are more setose and fore tarsi has a tooth. Pore plates absent.
Intraspecific variation
Unknown.
Genus and similar species information
Elaphrothrips is the Idolothripinae genus with the most described species, with almost 150 species widely distributed across tropical and subtropical regions. These thrips are usually large and dark-colored, distinguished from other Brazilian Idolothripinae (except Saurothrips) for having two pairs of wing-retaining setae on the abdominal tergites; in larger specimens, many accessory setae may be present in addition to the main wing-retaining pairs. Besides that, they have elongated head, major ocellar setae posterior to the anterior ocellus, basantra present, and tube shorter than the head, without lateral setae. Many species have high morphological diversity associated to size, wing-development and sex, which makes the distinction between species harder; and it is possible that many species in the genus will be identified as synonyms in the future.
