Cabbage leafminer
The cabbage leafminer is a tiny grey fly with black and yellow spots. Its babies live inside leaves. They eat their way between the top and bottom of the leaf and leave long, wiggly trails, like a little snake drawing.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its whole life, from egg to grown-up fly, can take as little as 21 days.
The mother lays her eggs right inside the skin of a leaf.
The larvae hatch within four days. They are yellow or green and grow through three stages.
A rock song called Outdoor Miner by the band Wire was written about this little insect.
Most asked questions about Cabbage leafminer
?What does the cabbage leafminer eat?
Its larvae tunnel inside the leaves of cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and other plants.
?Is the cabbage leafminer dangerous?
Not to people. It is a tiny fly that cannot bite or sting, but it can harm vegetable leaves.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Liriomyza brassicae
- Group
- Flies and mosquitoes
- Family
- Agromyzidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Diptera > Agromyzidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania, Africa, North America, South America
- Also known as
- Serpentine leaf miner
Where the facts come from
- Serpentine leaf miner (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 Jerry A. Payne. CC-BY-3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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