I thought this was cool. I didn’t know that the eggs were laid in the leaf. I thought they were laid in the soil.
Thrips lay extremely small eggs, about 0.2 mm long. Females of the suborder Terebrantia cut slits in plant tissue with their ovipositor, and insert their eggs, one per slit. Females of the suborder Tubulifera lay their eggs singly or in small groups on the outside surfaces of plants.[56]
Thrips are hemimetabolous, metamorphosing gradually to the adult form. The first two instars, called larvae or nymphs, are like small wingless adults (often confused with springtails) without genitalia; these feed on plant tissue. In the Terebrantia, the third and fourth instars, and in the Tubulifera also a fifth instar, are non-feeding resting stages similar to pupae: in these stages, the body’s organs are reshaped, and wing-buds and genitalia are formed.[56] The adult stage can be reached in around 8–15 days; adults can live for around 45 days.[57] Adults have both winged and wingless forms; in the grass thrips Anaphothrips obscurus, for example, the winged form makes up 90% of the population in spring (in temperate zones), while the wingless form makes up 98% of the population late in the summer.[58] Thrips can survive the winter as adults or through egg or pupal diapause.[10]
Thrips are haplodiploid with haploid males (from unfertilised eggs, as in Hymenoptera) and diploid females capable of parthenogenesis (reproducing without fertilisation), many species using arrhenotoky, a few using thelytoky.[59] The sex-determining bacterial endosymbiont Wolbachia is a factor that affects the reproductive mode.[36][59][60] Several normally bisexual species have become established in the United States with only females present.[59][61]