Meeting Abstract
The ability of dipteran insects (flies) to perform complex acrobatic maneuvers while maintaining stability in flight is due in part to specialized sensory organs called halteres. Halteres are modified hind-wings that oscillate in antiphase with the fore-wings during flight and detect inertial forces produced by body rotations (Nalbach 1993). The halteres are coupled with the wings during flight through mechanical linkages in the thorax (Sane et al. 2015). How is the synchronization between the two halteres maintained and are they synchronized during other behaviors? Is the connection between the left and right haltere purely mechanical or is there a sensory component to their synchronization as well? Here we show that the halteres are not synchronized during walking and flight initiation behaviors. Halteres are only reliably synchronized when flies flap their wings at high frequencies with the wings intact. Flies with clipped wings flapping at high frequencies or intact wings that are either stationary or flapping at low frequency do not oscillate their halteres in synchrony. This suggests that sensory input from the wings may contribute to haltere-haltere synchronization.
