Thrips, commonly known as thunderflies or thunderbugs, are minute, slender insects with fringed wings and unique asymmetrical mouthparts. Entomologists have described approximately 7,700 species; they are distributed globally with their food plants. They fly only weakly and their feathery wings are unsuitable for conventional flight; instead, thrips exploit an unusual mechanism, clap and fling, to create lift using an unsteady circulation pattern with transient vortices near the wings.