Leaf Miner Fly Babies Scribble All Over Your Salad, Deep Look

This flys larvae tunnel inside bittertasting greens like arugula and kale, leaving squiggly marks behind. The plants fight back with toxic chemicals. So before laying her eggs, the fly mom digs into a leaf and slurps its sap a taste test to find the least toxic spot for her offspring. SUBSCRIBE to Deep Look DEEP LOOK is an ultraHD (4K) short video series created by KQED San Francisco and presented by PBS Digital Studios. See the unseen at the very edge of our visible world. Explore big scientific mysteries by going incredibly small. As they feed inside a leafs spongy layer, leaf miners etch intricate patterns that are visible to us on the leafs surface. The whitish tan or light gray markings can be neatly serpentine or converge and have a blotchlike appearance, depending on what insect made them. Many different flies, butterflies and moths lay eggs on the leaves of citrus, vegetables and ornamental plants that grow into leaf miner larvae. One leaf miner that gardeners