European holly leafminer
The holly leafminer is a tiny fly with red eyes. Its babies live inside holly leaves and eat tunnels through them. The tunnels show up as pale, wiggly trails on the dark green leaf.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Each wing is only about 2.5 to 3 millimetres long.
Holly leaves are very tough, so the female can only lay eggs in spring when new leaves are still soft.
She lays an egg in the stalk or middle vein under the leaf, which leaves a small scar.
Its maggots have no legs and no hard head.
It does not live where the coldest month is colder than about half a degree below zero.
Most asked questions about European holly leafminer
?What are the pale trails on holly leaves?
They are tunnels eaten by the maggots of the holly leafminer, living inside the leaf.
?Is the holly leafminer harmful?
Not to people. It only nibbles the inside of holly leaves.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Phytomyza ilicis
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Agromyzidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Agromyzidae
- Lives on
- Europe, North America
- Also known as
- Holly leaf miner
Where the facts come from
- Phytomyza ilicis (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by No machine-readable author provided. TeunSpaans assumed (based on copyright claims).. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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