The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Columbia Encyclopedia World Factbook American Heritage Coll. Many are common greenhouse and crop pests.
Adult females are wingless, with oval, segmented bodies and well-developed legs.
The females and young feed on various parts of plants with their sucking mouthparts. Adult males have no mouthparts and do not feed. In egg-laying species the female produces several hundred eggs in a mass covered with waxy threads. In other species the young are born alive. Mealybugs are classified in the phylum Arthropoda , class Insecta, order Homoptera, family Pseudococcidae.