Data from: Neural evidence supports a dual sensory-motor role for insect wings

Flying insects use feedback from various sensory modalities including
vision and mechanosensation to navigate through their environment. The
rapid speed of mechanosensory information acquisition and processing
compensates for the slower processing times associated with vision,
particularly under low light conditions. While halteres in dipteran
species are well known to provide such information for flight control,
less is understood about the mechanosensory roles of their evolutionary
antecedent, wings. The features that wing mechanosensory neurons
(campaniform sensilla) encode remains relatively unexplored. We
hypothesized that the wing campaniform sensilla of the hawkmoth, Manduca
sexta, rapidly and selectively extract mechanical stimulus features in a
manner similar to halteres. We used electrophysiological and computational
techniques to characterize the encoding properties of wing campaniform
sensilla. To accomplish this, we developed a novel technique for
localizing receptive fields using a focused IR laser that elicits changes
in the neural activity of mechanoreceptors. We found that (i) most wing
mechanosensors encoded mechanical stimulus features rapidly and precisely,
(ii) they are selective for specific stimulus features, and (iii) there is
diversity in the encoding properties of wing campaniform sensilla. We
found that the encoding properties of wing campaniform sensilla are
similar to those for haltere neurons. Therefore, it appears that the
neural architecture that underlies the haltere sensory function is present
in wings, which lends credence to the notion that wings themselves may
serve a similar sensory function. Thus, wings may not only function as the
primary actuator of the organism but also as sensors of the inertial
dynamics of the animal.