Scaling of the Sense Organs of Insects. 2. Sensilla. Discussion. Conclusion

Makarova, Anastasia A.; Diakova, A. A.; Chaika, S.Y.; Polilov, Alexey A.

doi:10.1134/s0013873822030058

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 217 publications

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“…The way that haltere length scales with body size is similar to the allometry found for some other sense organs including vertebrate eyes (Howland et al, 2004), insect compound eyes (Jander & Jander, 2002;Perl & Niven, 2016;Rutowski et al, 2009) and insect antennae (Makarova et al, 2022;Symonds & Elgar, 2013). I found that haltere length scales with body mass 0.23 in each of the clades I studied, but the initial growth index varied between them.…”

Section: Haltere Length and Shapesupporting

confidence: 76%

“…For example, in houseflies, larger individuals have more chemosensors on their antennae and palps than smaller individuals (Smallegange et al., 2008). Among many insect orders, there is a correlation between body size and the number of chemosensitive and mechanosensitive hair sensilla on the body surface (Makarova et al., 2022). It may be that CS are more fixed in number than mechanosensory hairs, perhaps associated with their organization into discrete fields, and this could be investigated in other mechanoreceptors, including CS fields elsewhere on the body (see Dickerson et al., 2021).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Scaling of sense organs that control flight: Size and sensory cell number of dipteran fly halteres

Simmons

2023

Journal of Zoology

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An animal with a large body can have larger sense organs than a smaller one, collecting more sensory information. However, many structures scale with body size to be relatively smaller in larger animals. This occurs with eyes, however the situation for mechanosensory organs is less clear. I investigated scaling of particular mechanosensory organs unique to dipteran flies, halteres, which replace hind wings and are important for the aerobatic ability underlying the success and diversity of dipterans. Halteres are shaped like drumsticks and beat up and down in time with the wings, acting as gyroscopes because yawing, pitching or rolling generate twisting forces in them. These forces are detected by campaniform sensilla (CS), dome‐shaped sensory cells in the cuticle that are mainly clustered into three fields. Unusually for a sense organ, individual CS are visible on the cuticle surface. I compared how haltere size, shape and CS number scale with body size in four clades representing different branches of dipteran phylogeny: tipulids (craneflies); tabanids (horseflies); syrphids (hoverflies) and calyptrates (e.g. houseflies, blowflies). In all clades, haltere length scaled with body mass raised to the power 0.23, similar to that for eyes of insects and other animals. It was directly proportional to wing length, probably enabling halteres to beat in time with wings. In relation to body size or wing length, tipulids had longer halteres than other clades. In contrast to haltere length, the number of CS was not related to body size within each clade but did vary between clades, suggesting a basic pattern for each clade was laid down early in its evolution. Tipulids had the smallest number, associated with relatively ponderous flight. Tabanids had more CS than calyptrates or syrphids, reasons for which require further investigation.

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