Female macropterous; body color dark brown, darker on head and distal abdominal segments, but tube golden, with extreme base and apex shaded; legs dark brown, with all tarsi, fore tibiae and bases and apexes of mid and hind tibiae yellow; antennomere I yellowish brown with yellow apex, II yellow, III yellow with apex shaded with brown, IV–VIII dark brown; wings shaded with brown, darker basally, with a dark median line. Antennae 8-segmented, but VII and VIII partially joined into a single unit; antennomere III with 2 sense cones. Head longer than wide, lateral margins almost straight; eyes small but well developed, pair of postocular setae well developed, other head setae minute; maxillary stylets long and close together medially. Pronotum with 5 pairs of well-developed setae, epimeral pair the longest. Metathoracic sternopleural sutures present. Abdominal tergites II–VII with 1 pair of wing-retaining setae. Tube almost cylinder-shaped, strongly constricted at the apex, about 1.4x as long as basal width. Fore legs slightly thicker than the others, fore tarsi with a large tooth. Fore wings without duplicated cilia.
Male macropterous. Similar to female but with fore legs more swollen. Pore plates absent.
Intraspecific variation
Unknown.
Genus and similar species information
Pygothrips is a genus with almost 20 species distributed in the tropics. Species of this genus have the abdominal sternites longer than the tergites and a stout cone-shaped tube, similar to Acallurothrips and Phacothrips. These characteristics seem to be associated to the defensive behavior of raising the abdomen over the body, common in these three genera; but Pygothrips is not closely related to the other two groups, being distinguished by the close together maxillary stylets within the head. Pygothrips callipygus is distinguished by its yellow tube, contrasting to the dark brown almost black tube seen in the other Brazilian species of the genus. A key to the Neotropical species of Pygothrips is available in Mound & Marullo (1996).
