Dr. Jessica Fox, Assistant Professor in Biology, had a paper published in Arthropod Structure and Development. She notes the following:

Our paper described the sensory cells at the base of the haltere, a specialized gyroscopic organ in flies. All flies- including house flies, fruit flies, and mosquitoes- have halteres, and they can’t fly without them. In our paper, we took scanning electron micrographs (SEMs) of the base of the haltere and examined the arrangement of the sensory cells. We found that flies that evolved more recently have sensory cells arranged in straighter lines than those flies that evolved earlier. Our work gives us a better understanding of how these organs might work in different flies, and paves the way for future work that will determine how halteres help different flies fly the way they do.

The lab was given the cover of the journal, viewable here: Fox-Lab-Journal-Cover1