How to Use parasitize in a Sentence

parasitize

verb
  • If they're drawn, the wasps that parasitize them should be drawn, too.
    — Christie Wilcox, Discover Magazine, 27 Nov. 2012
  • In the early 1980s, half the vireo nests there were parasitized.
    — Carl Zimmer, Discover Magazine, 11 Nov. 2019
  • Named for the birds that lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, cuckoo bees also parasitize the nests of other bees.
    — Carlyn Kranking, Smithsonian Magazine, 12 July 2024
  • The larvae parasitize earthworms, with adult flies emerging a few days later.
    — Arricca Elin Sansone, Southern Living, 29 Oct. 2025
  • The cage must provide protection against some predators but probably not against the wasps that parasitize it.
    — Johnny Simon, Quartz, 8 Sep. 2019
  • Hundreds of thousands of wasp species parasitize other insects.
    — Nala Rogers, Popular Mechanics, 9 Aug. 2023
  • Scientists think the genet gets access to insects that are stirred up by the larger animals or which parasitize them.
    — Brian Clark Howard, National Geographic, 2 Sep. 2016
  • Horsfield’s bronze cuckoos—also small and sweet-looking—frequently parasitize fairy wrens’ nests.
    — Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 27 Mar. 2023
  • Fungi can also parasitize and kill insects, including those troublesome to us.
    — Kenneth Miller, Discover Magazine, 30 May 2013
  • The wasps parasitize the borers’ eggs to reduce the borer population, Teerling said.
    — Alyssa Lukpat, BostonGlobe.com, 17 July 2019
  • But humans moved in and cut forests, essentially creating more plains, allowing cowbirds to move into more areas to parasitize more species.
    — Val Cunningham Special To The Star Tribune, Star Tribune, 6 July 2021
  • These almost microscopic wasps emerge from the sandpaper-looking material and fly off to parasitize and destroy pest moth eggs.
    — Howard Garrett, Dallas News, 8 Mar. 2021
  • Some kinds benefit the soil, but others parasitize crops, inflicting more than $100 billion in losses worldwide each year.
    — Byerik Stokstad, science.org, 25 May 2023
  • Follow-up studies have shown the wasps can find beetles, parasitize them, and reproduce; in some trees, up to 80% of ash borer larvae have wasps living inside them.
    — Gabriel Popkin, Science | AAAS, 12 Nov. 2020
  • Worm-snails can also carry certain blood flukes that parasitize loggerhead sea turtles, which are vulnerable to extinction.
    — National Geographic, 5 Apr. 2017
  • The most famous of the obligate brood parasites is the common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus), and these birds parasitize several species.
    — Nathan H. Lents, Smithsonian Magazine, 11 Apr. 2025
  • There are two other species of Thelazia worms that infect humans, and Beckley’s infection represents a third species now known to parasitize humans.
    — Jason Daley, Smithsonian, 14 Feb. 2018
  • Last Movies parasitizes the predatory relationship the dominant screen culture encourages people to have with its stars.
    — Georg Szalai, HollywoodReporter, 13 Mar. 2026
  • The individual scale insects are enrobed in fungal chambers which shield them from predators and the elements, though some are parasitized so the fungus can obtain nutrients.
    — Miri Talabac, Baltimore Sun, 16 Mar. 2023
  • Many other wasp species also use complex venoms to parasitize spiders, caterpillars and even wasp larvae—sometimes turning them into zombie larva defenders.
    — Christie Wilcox, Scientific American, 1 May 2017
  • Why doesn’t the mussel just release its young into the water column, like any number of other freshwater mussels (whose larvae also find fish to parasitize, only by floating around willy-nilly)?
    — Matt Simon, WIRED, 16 Oct. 2015
  • In some cases, multiple wasp species parasitize one another, leading to a Russian doll of parasitic interactions.
    — Christie Wilcox, Scientific American, 1 May 2017
  • Once the grub is parasitized, the nematodes use it as a food source and incubator, producing a whole new generation of beneficial nematodes to find remaining pests.
    — Sj McShane, Martha Stewart, 8 May 2026
  • The latest organisms that researchers have looked to are bacteria in the microbiomes of roundworms that parasitize insects (technically termed enteropathogenic nematodes).
    — Diana Gitig, Ars Technica, 20 Nov. 2019
  • They are known to parasitize crustaceans and insects including praying mantids, beetles, crickets, and occasionally millipedes and centipedes, according to the study.
    — Lauren Liebhaber, Miami Herald, 6 Oct. 2025
  • Greenland sharks are known to famously be parasitized by the copepod scientifically known as Ommatokoita elongata.
    — Melissa Cristina Márquez, Forbes, 4 May 2023
  • As science journalist Rachel Nuwer writes, as many as 40 to 50 percent of all animal species are parasites, and almost every other species has at least one parasite that has evolved to parasitize it.
    — Laura Helmuth, Scientific American, 1 May 2022
  • They've been linked to cicadas before, with the Illinois Department of Public Health releasing a report in 2008 that said cicadas were the only insect parasitized by the mites the year prior.
    — Li Cohen, CBS News, 15 Aug. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'parasitize.' 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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