How to Use mealybug in a Sentence
mealybug
noun-
The most common pest is mealybugs that look like white masses of cotton attached to the leaves.
—Arricca Elin Sansone, Country Living, 10 May 2023
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A type of scale or mealybug from Asia appeared in south Plaquemines last year.
—Tristan Baurick, NOLA.com, 18 May 2017
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The aphid-like insect was identified as an Asian scale, also known as a mealybug, in April.
—Tristan Baurick, NOLA.com, 31 May 2017
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The citrus mealybug, Planococcus citri, is a a sap-sucking plant pest barely an eighth of an inch long.
—Elizabeth Preston, Discover Magazine, 19 Aug. 2011
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This treatment should also help avoid mealybugs, mites, thrips, and whiteflies.
—Southern Living Editors, Southern Living, 15 June 2023
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Lacewings Both adult lacewings and their larvae eat aphids, caterpillars, mealybugs, scales, thrips, and whiteflies.
—The Editors Of Organic Life, Good Housekeeping, 11 May 2016
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What’s a mealybug? Q: Plants in our landscape, including peony stems that have been cut back, have little white blobs.
—oregonlive, 2 Dec. 2022
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Look beyond the black coating for insects including mealybugs, whiteflies and scale that are sucking juices from the plant.
—Tom MacCubbin, OrlandoSentinel.com, 27 May 2017
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Check for summer pests of mealybugs and scale insects; control with natural sprays.
—Tom MacCubbin, OrlandoSentinel.com, 1 July 2017
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Yet that often has little effect in containing the disease, which is spread by tiny white insects called mealybugs.
—Olivia Konotey-Ahulu / Bloomberg, Time, 6 Sep. 2019
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Thus, Tremblaya and Moranella work together to produce essential amino acids for themselves as well as the ones that the mealybug cannot find in its strict sap diet.
—Quanta Magazine, 3 Oct. 2019
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At some point, the Tremblaya genome shrank so much that the bacterium’s amino acid production machinery gummed up, forcing the mealybug to recruit a second partner to pick up the slack.
—Ed Yong, Discover Magazine, 21 Nov. 2011
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Another easy way to reduce aphid, mealybug and whitefly populations on sturdy plants is to knock them off with a strong spray of water in the morning.
—Debbie Arrington, sacbee, 22 Dec. 2017
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Lady Beetles Adult lady beetles eat aphids, mites, and mealybugs, and their hungry larvae do even more damage to garden pests.
—The Editors Of Organic Life, Good Housekeeping, 11 May 2016
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Pests controlled: Yellow traps attract whiteflies, fruit flies, male winged scales, leafhoppers, fungus gnats, midges, male winged mealybugs and leafminers, thrips, psyllids, and winged aphids.
—The Editors Of Organic Life, Good Housekeeping, 18 Dec. 2017
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Phillip and Beazley have found mango weevil, pink hibiscus mealybug and citrus canker.
—Laura Reiley, Washington Post, 27 Nov. 2019
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Neem oil is labeled for soft-bodied pests such as aphids, beetle larvae, caterpillars, leafhoppers, mealybugs, thrips, spider mites, and whiteflies.
—Megan Hughes, Better Homes & Gardens, 26 May 2023
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Some insect activity and sooty mold can be tolerated by the plants, plus natural controls may help eliminate the mealybugs.
—Tom MacCubbin, Orlando Sentinel, 29 Apr. 2023
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Examine houseplants and tropicals before bringing them indoors and discard any that are full of whitefly, scale, mealybugs or other tenacious pests.
—Washington Post, 29 Oct. 2019
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One such Russian-doll merger occurred about 100 million years ago, when the small insect pests called mealybugs acquired a bacterial endosymbiont, Tremblaya.
—Quanta Magazine, 3 Oct. 2019
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Tremblaya helps to supply the mealybug with essential amino acids and likely receives nutrients and other life-sustaining molecules in return.
—Quanta Magazine, 20 June 2013
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With just 121 protein-coding genes, the diminutive Tremblaya princeps, a symbiotic bacterium that lives inside specialized cells of the sap-eating mealybug, has the smallest known genome of any cellular organism on the planet.
—Quanta Magazine, 20 June 2013
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The mealybug genome appears to include genes from other varieties of bacteria distinct from Tremblaya and Moranella, and the two endosymbiont bacteria may use the protein products of these genes to manufacture nutrients and to make their membranes.
—Quanta Magazine, 20 June 2013
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'mealybug.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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