Paederus

Paederus is a genus of small beetles of the family Staphylinidae ("rove beetles"). With 622 valid species assigned by 1987 to the subtribe Paederina (Paederus and its close allies), and with all but 148 within Paederus itself, the genus is large. Due to toxins in the hemolymph of some species within this genus, it has given its name to paederus dermatitis, a characteristic skin irritation that occurs if one of the insects is crushed against skin. That name, Paederus dermatitis, is a poor choice because, decades earlier, the affliction had been called dermatitis linearis, a name that works in all languages, not just English, because of its Latin origin; the name Paederus dermatitis is also inappropriate because it has shown to be caused by (a) only a few species of the genus Paederus, but (b) also a few species that belong to closely related genera (that are not Paederus) within the subtribe Paederina. A scholarly paper in 2002 suggested that a Paederus species could have been responsible for some of the ten Plagues of Egypt described in the Bible's Book of Exodus.