I can't say whether or not it's mealybugs or fungus, but I did want to chime in. Not all fungi are bad. In fact our rainforests wouldn't be able to exist if it weren't for the fungi that break down dead organic matter and recycle the nutrients back into the ecosystem. That's why archaeologists have discovered entire petrified forests from our ancient past. Because all of these massive trees had no way of decaying back down into reusable nutrients. These ancient trees just lingered there for so long that they eventually petrified into stone. It wasn't until many millions of years later, when fungi were able to evolve and take up their role in recycling dead organic matter back into our environment. For the longest time, orchid growers could never get their orchids' microscopic seeds to germinate. They would just sprinkle the very fine orchid seed "dust" down close to the parent plants' roots and just hope for the best. It wasn't until a botanist figured out that they needed a specific fungus to "infect" the seeds and get them to germinate. After that discovery, orchid growing and hybridization essentially exploded onto the market. Now we have literally hundreds of thousands of hybrids, with ever more newer varieties being introduced all of the time. All thanks to the symbiotic relationship between orchids and their beneficial fungi. I've found fungi growing in many of my plants in the past. And not once do I ever remember any of them being adversely affected from it. In fact, it always seemed to be quite the opposite. My plants were/are doing great. And from what I can tell, your Fiddle Leaf fig seems to be doing great as well, and doesn't seem stressed out at all.

I really wish this section of the forum had something at the top saying it's for edible figs only. the title is incredibly misleading to most. "This forum is for the discussion of figs, those plants of the genus Ficus" There are new posts every week about fiddle leaf figs which don't belong in this section of the forum. Try the houseplant section of this forum.

If I were Eve I'd start pruning that tree to be even more bushy! I've never been inspired by an F. lyrata before, but now I know that it's the tree-like like look that puts me off, because it looks more natural and healthy to me as a bush. But enough about me! Here's a great example of a thread with lots of advice on shaping F. lyratas into trees, and I'm sure you'll find some very helpful info if you spend some time browsing through the posts. Pruning ficus lyrata to branch

It makes no sense to wait to remove the subordinate leaders if she wants a tree with a single trunk. The wounds from the subordinate trunks will just be larger and take longer to close. In addition, there is nothing that says a person must choose the dominant leader as the last stem standing. Sara could as easily choose a subordinate stem as her new, single leader based on things like its movement, the angle at which it leaves the soil, or position - related to the other stems removed. So would you recommend I do a little surgery on the base to see how many ”trunks” I’m dealing with? I don't think it matters how many trunks there are. If you have 10, you need to remove 9, if there are 20, it's 19 you'll remove. I can’t really tell if this is just one trunk with multiple off shoots or whats going on. It feels so messy and overwhelming at the base. You probably have the cultivar "Bambino", which is just one of the names given to a dwarf form of lyrata with smaller, more upright leaves and much shorter internodes. All my advice, so far, was aimed at the fact that you want a single trunk on your tree. That's easily doable, but you'll be fighting against the tree's natural growth habit, something I think Dave might have alluded to upthread. As your tree grows, those trunks will become more exposed, so you can tidy-up around the soil line with a pair of scissors. You can even remove several trunks so you end up with a great looking clump formation. That's definitely what I would do with the tree. I'd keep 3, 5, or 7 trunks of varying thickness, shorten them (or not) based on their thickness, and remove the rest. Then, I'd get another tree that wants to be a tree, and not a shrub. If you DO go for a single trunk, make sure you remove all buds that break low on the tree, as they emerge, or you'll be removing another dozen wannabe trunks in a year or two. Al