The head has an orange tuft between the antennae. The young larva or caterpillar is greenish brown in color with dark brown head. The prothorax is enlarged and the body somewhat flattened. The pupa is light yellowish brown and tapers posteriorly. The eggs are soft, white, and elliptical.
Sugar maple is the preferred host for the maple leaf cutter.
When the favored food supply has become exhausted, however, adjacent beech, birch, and red maples may also become infested. The moths emerge from the pupae in the leaf litter in May and deposit their eggs in tiny pearshaped pockets in the tissues of the leaf just under the lower epidermis. Many eggs are deposited in a single leaf, often in chain-like rows. The tiny scars produced in the process are visible from the upper side, giving the leaf a yellowish stippled effect. The larvae begin life as leaf miners, feeding on the tissues between the upper and lower epidermis.