Did you ask any SETI scientists? ;-)
>This morning I looked at the
>plants and found the smoking gun---on some of the most infected leaves I
>found zillions of invertebrates. I took new samples into the entomology dept.
>and had it verified as thrips.
>
>To look for thrips, you'll probably need a hand-lens. Look for small crawling
>insects about 0.5--1.0 mm long, and about .25 mm wide. They are elongated
>crawling insects that are semi-transparent (at least mine are). They suck
>fluids and expell droplets onto the plant. I'm going to get rid of mine
>by swabbing the leaves with a bit of alcohol, and letting them sit in shade
>for a few hours as the alcohol dries. They apparently do not enter the roots.
They sound just like my Darlingtonia attackers. Only thrips? - how boring...
(I got a bit drastic and used Malascale on mine as the plants also had a
bad scale infestation :-( Seems to work well on mealy bugs too. Serve
myself right for neglecting my plants.)
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| John Taylor [Catweasel] | Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology |
| rphjt@minyos.xx.rmit.oz.au | Department of Applied Physics |
| | Melbourne, Victoria, AUSTRALIA |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------------+