Cantharidin is a poisonous substance secreted by blister beetles, including the 'Spanish fly'. Historically, cantharidin was used as an aphrodisiac, vesicant and abortifacient. Symptoms of poisoning include gastrointestinal and genitourinary mucosal irritation along with renal dysfunction. We present the case of a reckless 23-year-old soldier who accepted the challenge of eating a beetle (Berbe...

The blister beetle Mylabris cichorii L. (Coleoptera: Meloidae) is a traditional medicinal insect recorded in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia. It synthesizes cantharidin, which kills cancer cells efficiently. Only males produce large amounts of cantharidin. Reference genes are required as endogenous controls for the analysis of differential gene expression in M. cichorii. Our study chose 10 genes as c...

We investigated the substrates for flight in the blister beetle Decapotoma lunata by (a) establishing the patterns of maximum activities of enzymes of various metabolic pathways in the flight muscles, (b) measuring the respiratory rates of flight muscle mitochondria with various substrates and (c) determining metabolite concentrations in flight muscles and haemolymph during a flight period of u...

Whitebark pine is an important component of high elevation ecosystems in the western United States and Canada. Many wildlife species, including grizzly and black bears, squirrels, and birds, forage on the large, wingless seed. Whitebark pine relies heavily upon the Clark's nutcracker for seed dispersal and regeneration. Due to fire exclusion, white pine blister rust, and the mountain pine beetl...

Cooperative behaviors are common among social insects such as bees, wasps, ants, and termites, but they have not been reported from insect species that use aggressive mimicry to manipulate and exploit prey or hosts. Here we show that larval aggregations of the blister beetle Meloe franciscanus, which parasitize nests of the solitary bee Habropoda pallida, cooperate to exploit the sexual communi...

Background: Surgical treatments of vitiligo are punch grafting, blister grafting, flip-top transplantation, split skin grafting, etc aiming at rebuilding of melanocytic population in those patients who do not respond to medical treatment . The objective of this study was determination of efficacy of blister grafting technique in the treatment of vitiligo. Methods: This study was done on 10 pati...