A total of 130 species of thrips occurring in Africa, Europe, and the Mediterranean region were intercepted by U.S. agricultural quarantine officers in shipments of plants and cut flowers at the various ports-of-entry in the United States from 1983 to 1999. Of the 24 most intercepted species of thrips encountered by port identifiers during this period, 10 of them were species of the genus Thrips Linnaeus, 1758 (T. tabaci Lindeman, T. fuscipennis (Haliday), T. major (Uzel), T. vulgatissimus (Haliday), T. meridionalis (Priesner), T. flavus Schrank, T. atratus (Haliday), T. simplex (Morison), T. nigropilosus Haliday, and T. australis (Bagnall)). This is Part III of a guide to the identification of thrips intercepted from those regions. Included are keys, line drawings, and scanning electron micrographs to help identify the 18 commonly intercepted species of the genus Thrips, characterized by the presence of ctenidia located posteriad of abdominal spiracle VIII.