Wormey trail things on leaves - friend or foe?

[WriggleJiggle]

Almost every plant in my garden has at least one or two leaves like this.

On the upper side of the leaf there are huge amounts of very wiggly white / pale yellow lines. Sort of as though something is burrowing inside the leaf. On the underneath you can see the lines, and also an occasional flat 'egg sac' type thing.

I have found a very small insect (2mm big) in one of them, on another leaf I found some white moth type things (2mm big). There are also greenfly and black fly on some leaves, but I presume its not them leaving the lines?

Oh, and now you've read so far, and identified them , what do I do about them?

Maybe some type of leaf miner? I would take these leaves off before they spread to other leaves.

oh dear, too late for that I'm afraid.

Any plans on how to get rid of them (apart from removing leaves from plant)

Well, if it's spreading that fast then you'll have to go with some sort of insecticide it would seem to me-by the time you introduced other beneficial insects all your plants would be consumed.

OK, I've found the beasties. Nasty, horrible, leaf sucking creatures . I don't think I can take so many leaves off each plant, but I'm starting to scrape them off individually. Are there any good websites for recognising bugs?

Here's a bunch of pictures of leafminers in North America but if you google leafnminer pictures I expect you could get pictures of some additional bugs. Also you could look at pictures of leafminer leaf damage and compare with yours to see if that's what this is.