When walking a field, the slimy material will rub off on your clothing. While both adults and larvae damage the plants, the larvae do the most damage. The larvae have three pairs of legs located close the head end of the immature insect. They feed on the leaf surface between veins, removing all the green material, resulting in elongated windowpane in the leaf. Severe feeding damage gives a frosted look to the field.
Adults are strong active flyers.
Adults may feed on corn, sorghum, and sudangrass. They may use redsident weeds or grasses including wild oats, quackgrass, timothy, reed canarygrass, annual and perennial ryegrass, foxtail, ocrchardgrass, wildrye, smooth bromegrass, and fescues. Fields need to be monitored in the spring for the adult feeding on the foliage first, though the adults are the target to control. Plant monitoring is needed and thresholds are expressed as eggs or larvae per plant or stem. One needs to examine 10 plants per location and 1 location every 10 acres of the field.