Bill Cissel, Extension Agent – Integrated Pest Management, University of Delaware; bcissel@udel.edu
Congratulations to Kathleen Heldreth for correctly identifying the insects as lace bugs and for being selected to be entered into the end of season raffle for $100 not once but five times. Everyone else who guessed correctly will also have their name entered into the raffle. Click on the Guess the Pest logo to participate in this week’s Guess the Pest challenge!
Lace bugs are sporadic pests of eggplant and occasional pests on other solanaceous crops including tomatoes and potatoes. As true bugs, they have piercing-sucking mouth parts, feeding on plant leaves causing a whitening/yellowing of the leaves. The holes in the leaves in the photos above are not a result of lace bug feeding but more likely damage from flea beetles, another pest of eggplant.
This is a great example of how the type of damage can give clues as to which insect caused the damage. In this case, even though the lace bugs are easily found on leaves with shotgun hole feeding, we know that the holes were not caused by the lace bugs because they have piercing-sucking mouthparts, not chewing mouthparts.
Lace Bug Feeding Injury
