Insects are important agents in ecosystems. Their diverseness and developed coping mechanisms also make them interesting for direct application and as a source of inspiration in medical engineering. We summarized the main contribution of insects in biomedical applications. Medical centers in North America, and Europe use fly larvae for maggot therapy to remove necrotic tissue, decrease infection risk, and improve wound healing. Ant mandibles are used as a suturing technique by African tribes and as sources of inspiration for surgical clamps. Both the mosquito fascicle and the wasp ovipositor are sources of inspiration for the design of medical needles. Herein, a new research field called 'entomomedical engineering,' is proposed. We define entomomedical engineering as the branch of engineering that uses insects either directly or as a source of inspiration to design and develop medical treatments or instruments. In addition, we want to emphasize the importance of preserving insects because of their function in the ecosystem, medicine, and medical engineering.

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Motor performance deficits are major issues impacting functional activities in older adults. Herein, we used locusts, emergent model organisms for neurodegeneration and motor deficit studies, to investigate the role of cognition as compensation strategy to age-related motor activation deficiency. An animal-robot interaction has been established to evoke anti-predator motor responses in locusts. We found a significantly earlier decision making of older adults that displayed their first motor response at a significantly longer distance from the approaching robotic predator, compared to young adults. Although older adult locusts reacted earlier to the approaching robot, performing a wider movement with their hind leg if compared to young adults, older adults obtained a body displacement significantly shorter than the body displacement of younger individuals. The earlier reaction in older adult locusts is probably due to a strategic behavior compensating a slower muscular response that may require a longer time to be performed, and this is consistent with other compensation strategies reported in humans. To the best of our knowledge this research represents a pilot study using ethorobotics to characterize associations between cognitive and motor functions, adding basic information on high-speed sensory-motor activation, that can be exploited to ameliorate motor decline in older adults.

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Bacteria colonization of substrates is a key issue threatening the health of humans worldwide. This review summarized recent bactericidal activity evidence of different structures developed by insects. We evaluated different mechanisms in bactericidal activity among several insect species, and we also provided a glimpse at attempts at fabricating bactericidal bioinspired structures. In addition, we investigated the link between species with mechano-bactericidal surfaces and their evolution and ecological dynamics. It emerged that mostly hemimetabolous insects evolved bactericidal nanostructures on their wings, probably due to development of their wings externally during postembryonal development. Whereas, holometabolous insects, which develop their wings internally during metamorphosis, have their wings exposed to the environment just in the adult instar, and thus subjected to bacteria for a shorter period compared to hemimetabolous insects. Bio-inspired high-aspect-ratio nanopillared surfaces with bactericidal properties might broaden the application area of bactericidal surfaces, to mechanically decrease the number of bacterial infections.@en