Apical stress fibers enable a scaling between cell mechanical response and area in epithelial tissue.

Biological systems tailor their properties and behavior to their size throughout development and in numerous aspects of physiology. However, such size scaling remains poorly understood as it applies to cell mechanics and mechanosensing. By examining how the pupal dorsal thorax epithelium responds to morphogenetic forces, we found that the number of apical stress fibers (aSFs) anchored to adherens junctions scales with cell apical area to limit larger cell elongation under mechanical stress. aSFs cluster Hippo pathway components, thereby scaling Hippo signaling and proliferation with area. This scaling is promoted by tricellular junctions mediating an increase in aSF nucleation rate and lifetime in larger cells. Development, homeostasis, and repair entail epithelial cell size changes driven by mechanical forces; our work highlights how, in turn, mechanosensitivity scales with cell size.