‘Nice Designs’ on Eggplant: How?

Interesting designs are seen on different types of vegetable plants here, most often on brinjal or eggplants, also known as Aubergine and tomato plants. When I see these designs I generally remove those leaves and try various sprays like neem oil, neem oil mixed with a little liquid soap, neem oil with eucalyptus oil and lemongrass oil etc. Sometimes there is relief and sometimes not. These are the creations of a group of insect larvae. It could be larvae of moths, wasps and beetles. They eat only the green part of the leaves containing least amount of cellulose. As they are mining into the leaves, they are protected from predators. The droppings and mining pattern is supposed to help in identifying the species. Another theory related to leaf miners is that variegated plants develop variegation pattern as a mechanism to fool adult insects having leaf miner larvae. It is said that adult insects do not select variegated leaves thinking that those leaves are already infested by leaf miners.