Female macropterous; body color mainly brown, including legs and antennae. Antennae 8-segmented, antennomere III with 2 and IV with 4 sense cones, III shorter than IV; antennomeres I–VI with a stout and capitate dorsal setae each. Head longer than wide, dorsal sculpture transversely striate, 2 pairs of stout and capitate dorsal setae, median pair almost as long as the postocular pair, and located far behind it; maxillary stylets wide apart. Pronotum with 5 pairs of well-developed setae, prosternal basantra absent. Metathoracic sternopleural sutures absent. Pelta entire, without smaller lateral plates distinct from the main median plate. Abdominal tergite II with 2 pairs of well-developed lateral setae, III with 3 pairs; II–VII with 1 pair of wing-retaining setae. Tube almost cylinder-shaped, about 7.2x as long as basal width, with several lateral setae. All legs similar in appearance, fore tarsi without a tooth. Fore wings without duplicated cilia.
Male macropterous and similar to female, fore legs without a tarsal tooth. Pore plates absent.
Intraspecific variation
Unknown.
Genus and similar species information
Zeugmatothrips is a genus with almost 20 species, distributed across the tropical forests in the Americas. It has a series of unusual characteristics, which helps differentiate this genus from other Idolothripinae: antennae with stout and capitate dorsal setae on the basal segments, antennomere III shorter than IV; head longer than wide, with the median dorsal setae stout and capitate, frequently as long as the postocular setae; tarsal tooth absent both in males and females; fore wings without duplicated cilia; tube long with several lateral setae. Zeugmatothrips niger is similar in many aspects to Z. femoralis, like the striated head, entire pelta and number of major capitate setae on the basal antennal segments; but it is distinguished from it by the uniformly dark fore legs. A key to Zeugmatothrips species is available in Mound & Palmer (1986).
