Ian Common gives the following description (page 198) for the genus Macarostola.- the first 2 instars are sap feeding in a slender mine. This broadens into a narrow elongate blotch, where the 3rd instar feeds on the deeper tissue. It then leaves the mine and forms a shelter by rolling the tip of a narrow leaf or a strip cut from the edge of a broader leaf, in which it feeds during the forth and fifth instars. It leaves the shelter and pupates in an oval flat cocoon in a hollow in the leaf created by folding the edge of the leaf inwards.
