You can't get it out of your head

Usage examples of earworm.

But different species can kill as many as two hundred kinds of pests, mostly caterpillars, like armyworms, cutworms, corn earworms, moths, leafworms and bollworms.

One is called the native budworm and the other, the corn earworm or the cotton bollworm - a good rowdy name for this pest.

A number of parasitic wasps will attack earworms, and green lacewings make excellent predators too.

The corn earworm moth, whose hungry larvae can decimate an otherwise healthy crop, has antennae tuned to these as well as other specific frequencies, with the result that when the female flies about on a clear moonlit night, she 'sees' - through her antennae - the whole field lit up, like an array of a myriad natural light bulbs.

The director of the county extension office must have rattled off two dozen possibilities, including the corn borer, corn earworm, corn weevil, corn beetle, corn-root aphid, and a very common parasitic fungus called corn smut.

Ethan had expected a worm: earthworm, corn earworm, cutworm, leech, caterpillar, trematode, one type of worm or another.