A single female specimen was found to be actively moving in a colony of Stephanitis typica (Distant) (Hemiptera: Tingidae), a common pest of banana foliage, in Tamil Nadu, South India, and collected using an aspirator. Though Thysanoptera taxonomy is on a solid foundation with several online resources such as ThripsWiki and OzThrips, images of live thrips are unavailable for most species as correct identification requires examination of slide mounted material. Here, a representative image of M. garuda is given because of its unique appearance that should make it easy to identify for applied entomologists.

Mymarothrips garuda can be identified by the following set of characters (modified from Ramakrishna & Margabandhu, 1931): Female: Macropterous. Length: 1.60 mm. Body colour bright yellow and black, with reddish pigmentation over abdominal segments 3 to 6 and apex; antenna black, stout and moniliform, with strong bristles; a bright yellow median longitudinal patch extending from ocellar region to base of abdomen, broader at pterothorax; cheeks brown, pronotum brown, tinged with red along sides, medially yellow (Fig. 1). Head and prothorax longer than broad. Forewing racket-shaped, apically greatly expanded; dark greyish with a distinct transverse hyaline patch just before apex; hindwing largely hyaline except for a broad greyish strip along anterior margin and smaller greyish/infuscate patches on basal and apical margins (Fig. 2).

Mymarothrips garuda appears to be a rare species of a rare genus, as nearly all available literature from India is based on just one or two specimens. In the Checklist of Indian Thysanoptera by Tyagi & Kumar (2016), M. garuda is listed as distributed in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. Rachana & Varatharajan (2017) also listed M. garuda in their Checklist of Indian Terebrantia. Maisnam et al. (2012) and later Varatharajan et al. (2018) recorded it from Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India.