Title: Functional organization of haltere feedback for Drosophila flight control

Abstract: The aerial maneuvers of flying insects are some of the most captivating and complex phenomena in all of biology. A full understanding of flight control demands a holistic approach that bridges neuroscience, biomechanics, and behavior at the organismal level. My lab studies the flight behavior of the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, combining the powerful genetic toolkit for labeling and manipulating neural circuits with in vivo imaging, behavior, and connectomics. Flies are remarkably agile, an ability that partly attributed to the evolution of halteres, specialized mechanosensory organs unique to flies. These tiny, club-shaped structures evolved from the hindwings and help regulate the wing steering system. Although commonly thought of as biological “gyroscopes,” halteres can regulate the wing steering system even in the absence of body rotations. I will discuss recent work in which we used a genetically encoded calcium indicator to visualize activity changes in the mechanosensors embedded in the haltere during active, visually mediated flight. I will also cover our development of an atlas describing the structure-function relationship between rapid mechanosensory feedback and motor systems.