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Frankliniella occidentalis

Summary
Resource Type
Organism
Genus
Frankliniella
Species
occidentalis
Common Name
Western flower thrips
Description

Frankliniella occidentalis, the western flower thrips, is a representative of the order Thysanoptera. This insect order is composed exclusively of tiny insects commonly called thrips, and includes more than 7,000 species.

Thrips are considered to be members of the hemipteroid assemblage, which includes the orders Hemiptera, Pscocoptera, and Phthiraptera.

Thysanopterans display an extraordinary amount of diversity with respect to food preference and behaviors. They share, however, some common, but unique, characteristics such as asymmetrical mouthparts composed of a fully developed left mandible and a resorbed right mandible during embryonic development and postembryonic ‘remetaboly’ development, a process that is intermediate between holometaboly and hemimetaboly development.

Frankliniella occidentalis is the most economically-important agronomic pest worldwide within Thysanoptera because it is a direct pest and an efficient vector of plant pathogenic viruses. F. occidentalis is polyphagous, feeding on a wide array of plant species and plant organs.

The insect is haplo-diploid, i.e., haploid males arise from unfertilized eggs, while diploid females develop from fertilized eggs. The short reproductive cycle (~12 days, egg to adult) and high fecundity (~75 eggs per female) of this species contributes to its success as an invasive species.

This species transmits at least five described Tospovirus species (negative strand RNA viruses) to hundreds of food, fiber, and ornamental crops. F. occidentalis efficiently transmits the type member, Tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV), in a persistent propagative fashion and the virus is passed transstadially from the young larval to pupul to adult developmental stages.

Despite their diversity, biological uniqueness, and economic importance as world-wide crop pests, there are currently no genomics resources available for insects classified in Thysanoptera. Genomics resources for this thrips species would provide tools to identify vector proteins involved in virus acquisition, replication and movement inside thrips tissues, and transmission to plants.

Data were generated by the Baylor College of Medicine's i5k pilot project.

View the Baylor College of Medicine's data sharing policy.

Publication
Rotenberg D, Baumann AA, Ben-Mahmoud S, Christiaens O, Dermauw W, Ioannidis P, Jacobs CGC, Vargas Jentzsch IM, Oliver JE, Poelchau MF, Rajarapu SP, Schneweis DJ, Snoeck S, Taning CNT, Wei D, Widana Gamage SMK, Hughes DST, Murali SC, Bailey ST, Bejerman NE, Holmes CJ, Jennings EC, Rosendale AJ, Rosselot A, Hervey K, Schneweis BA, Cheng S, Childers C, Simão FA, Dietzgen RG, Chao H, Dinh H, Doddapaneni HV, Dugan S, Han Y, Lee SL, Muzny DM, Qu J, Worley KC, Benoit JB, Friedrich M, Jones JW, Panfilio KA, Park Y, Robertson HM, Smagghe G, Ullman DE, van der Zee M, Van Leeuwen T, Veenstra JA, Waterhouse RM, Weirauch MT, Werren JH, Whitfield AE, Zdobnov EM, Gibbs RA, Richards S. Genome-enabled insights into the biology of thrips as crop pests.. BMC biology. 2020 10 19; 18(1):142.
Organism Image
Image Credit
Whitney Cranshaw, Colorado State Univeristy. CCBY license. View Source
Analysis
NameProgramDate Constructed
Frankliniella occidentalis genome assembly Focc_3.0 (GCA_000697945.4_Focc_3.0)AllPaths LG v. 44620; Atlas Link v. 1.0; Atlas GapFill v. 2.2Dec 18th, 2019
BCM annotation of the Frankliniella occidentalis assembly using Maker and additional analysesMAKERFeb 6th, 2014
Frankliniella occidentalis annotations fraocc_OGSv1.0GFF3toolkitOct 11th, 2018
Frankliniella occidentalis annotations fraocc_OGSv1.1Coordinates conversionDec 6th, 2019
Functional annotation of Frankliniella occidentalis fraocc OGSv1.1AgBase functional annotation pipelineJun 8th, 2022
Whole genome assembly of Frankliniella occidentalisBaylor College of Medicine genome assembly pipelineDec 6th, 2013
Assembly Stats
Contig N50
6158
Scaffold N50
948890
GC Content
54.29
Other Information
Community Contact
Dorith Rotenberg|drotenb@ncsu.edu
Links