That is a congregation of STINKBUG nymphs. Leave them alone and they will be the bane of your tomato season when they grow up to become pests... They are NOT my friends.... Assassin bugs do NOT have the black bump on their butts. It's how I remember the bad stinkbug nymps. "BAD Bug Black Butt Bump..." And, the final clue: Stinkbug nymphs assemble in congregations, like they're praying in church over whatever they're destroying at the moment. ASSASSIN bugs travel just like their names. Singular. Solitary. You may see a number of them in your grass, but they put distance between themselves as they patrol. They don't hang out as a gang...They're assassins.... I take care of my assassin bugs. As soon as I get home, I'm gonna snatch up that congregation of stinkbug nymphs I noticed just yesterday, sitting on an eggplant, just like yours. I sneak up on them with a plastic bag, and capture them and that one eggplant, all at once... P.S. The eggplant in your post seems to have grown dull. Pick your eggplants when they are very shiny. Pick them regularly to encourage production. The sooner you pick them, the sooner you'll have new blooms. Remember: "A dull eggplant = a bitter eggplant..." Linda This post was edited by gymgirl2 on Tue, Sep 10, 13 at 16:12

You know, the black ones, they almost look like those little snail shell creatures that you see on the surface of the ground or on plants.. like small very thin shelled snails with soft bodies splitting and crawiing out of the shells. They're green and soft bodied like aphids, but, like gus said, not exactly like the typical aphid. Hope we get a definitive answer to this mystery.

Yeah sounds like spittle bugs (aka froghopper). You can learn all about them via Google. No problem. Dave

Hmm. I think one's garden and growing conditions should be considered. Northern gardens get more sun than southern gardens in the summer (which is kind of a surprise, since the south is generally considered to be warmer). Eggplant plants don't grow very big in my garden, even for varieties like Aswad, and if I remember right, Black Beauty. I think that's partly due to the more compact soil, the fact that I don't fertilize a lot, and partly the semi-arid climate. I'm sure the growing season length matters, too. I can certainly believe that they would grow bigger in different gardens, though. I've grown Spicy Globe Bush basil in partial shade with good results. It did as well as the plant in full sun. It mostly got western sun. The plant in full sun eventually got shaded out by nearby plants (peppers, okra, Morelle De Balbis, maybe tomatoes a bit and/or weeds), but it was still fine, if you could find it (I could always smell it when I was near, at least); it didn't get squashed (just shaded, although the shade wasn't dark). Spicy Globe Bush is quite a bit different-looking than many basils, though. It might be more shade-tolerant. I'm growing a bunch of new kinds, this year, but our shade trees are coming down; so the vast majority of plants will have a lot of sun.