The halteres of flies are mechanosensory organs that provide information about body rotations during flight. We measured haltere movements in a range of fly taxa during free walking and tethered flight. We find a diversity of wing-haltere phase relationships in flight, with higher variability in more ancient families and less in more derived families. Diverse haltere movements were observed during free walking and were correlated with phylogeny. We predicted that haltere removal might decrease behavioural performance in those flies that move them during walking and provide evidence that this is the case. Our comparative approach reveals previously unknown diversity in haltere movements and opens the possibility of multiple functional roles for halteres in different fly behaviours.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2015.0845 | DOI Listing |
Curr Biol
September 2024
Division of Biology and Bioengineering, California Institute of Technology, 1200 E. California Boulevard, Pasadena, CA 91125, USA. Electronic address:
A new study exploits genetic approaches available in Drosophila to record the neural activity within the specialized mechanosensory fields of halteres, the unique equilibrium organs of flies. The results challenge the traditional explanation for how these rapidly oscillating structures encode angular velocity during flight.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Biol
August 2024
Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA. Electronic address:
Members of the order Diptera, the true flies, are among the most maneuverable flying animals. These aerial capabilities are partially attributed to flies' possession of halteres, tiny club-shaped structures that evolved from the hindwings and play a crucial role in flight control. Halteres are renowned for acting as biological gyroscopes that rapidly detect rotational perturbations and help flies maintain a stable flight posture.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Biol Sci
June 2024
Department of Biology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA.
Halteres are multifunctional mechanosensory organs unique to the true flies (Diptera). A set of reduced hindwings, the halteres beat at the same frequency as the lift-generating forewings and sense inertial forces via mechanosensory campaniform sensilla. Though haltere ablation makes stable flight impossible, the specific role of wing-synchronous input has not been established.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Comp Neurol
January 2024
National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India.
Head movements of insects play a vital role in diverse locomotory behaviors including flying and walking. Because insect eyes move minimally within their sockets, their head movements are essential to reduce visual blur and maintain a stable gaze. As in most vertebrates, gaze stabilization behavior in insects requires the integration of both visual and mechanosensory feedback by the neck motor neurons.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFbioRxiv
June 2024
Department of Neurology, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21205, USA.
Animal behavior depends on internal state. While subtle movements can signify significant changes in internal state, computational methods for analyzing these "microbehaviors" are lacking. Here, we present FlyVISTA, a machine-learning platform to characterize microbehaviors in freely-moving flies, which we use to perform deep phenotyping of sleep.
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