Grape Flea Beetle

In mid-June, I emailed Fritz Westover, who along with Ed Hellman, maintain a site called The Vineyard Doctor, about a little beetle that we managed to get a good close up photo of. From looking at the Vineyard Doctor site, it appeared that this little beetle was a Grape Flea Beetle and Fritz confirmed it.

When our Auxerrois was leafing out, we saw some leaf damage that looked like this. We turned the leaf over and to our horror, we saw the culprit! It was some kind of little larva. We took the leaves home where we could get a closer view of the little varmints and they looked like this:

It turned out that these were the larval stages of the grape flea beetle. The larval stages of an insect can be very different from the adult, therefore it is helpful to know what the various stages look like. The Vineyard Doctor site mentions that both the larval and the adult stages are damaging to grapevines. The areas most affected by the grape flea beetle are those closest to wooded or protected areas. This is true of our Auxerrois that grows on the west side of our property. Fortunately, there were only 4 such vines that were affected and we were able to remove the larva and get rid of the leaves. We monitored one of the affected vines and it is making a comeback!
A really good explanation and key to recognizing larval forms from the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture, Food and Environment can be found at this link: RECOGNIZING INSECT LARVAL TYPES
Link to: The Vineyard Doctor