thumb|upright=1.4|8= single pair of wings and 9= halteres
thumb|Crane fly haltere
thumb|Halteres of a fly moving
<!--thumb|360px|[[Drosophila (fruit fly) haltere: knob-shaped structure indicated by blue circle]]-->
Halteres (; singular halter or haltere) (from , hand-held weights to give an impetus in leaping) are a pair of small club-shaped organs on the body of some flying insects that provide information about body rotations during flight. They are present on insects belonging to two orders, Diptera and Strepsiptera. In dipterans, the halteres evolved from a pair of ancestral hindwings, while males of the much smaller strepsipterans (stylops) have halteres evolved from a pair of ancestral forewings.
Halteres oscillate rapidly along with the wings and operate like vibrating structure gyroscopes: any rotation of the plane of oscillation causes a force on the vibrating halteres by the Coriolis effect. The insect detects this force with sensory organs called campaniform sensilla and chordotonal organs located at the base of the halteres as well as to the muscles responsible for stabilizing the head.
Background
The majority of insects have two pairs of wings. Flies possess only one set of lift-generating wings and one set of halteres. The order name for flies, "Diptera", literally means "two wings", but there is another order of insect which has evolved flight with only two wings: strepsipterans, or stylops; The strepsipterans have adapted their forewings into halteres, whereas dipterans have adapted their hindwings into halteres. This unique structure which detects rotations/perturbations during flight has never been described in nature elsewhere, though many flying insects have been shown to detect Coriolis forces from their non-specialised wings. During these periods, the haltere is no longer moving in only two directions (up and down), but four (up, down, left, and right). The force exerted on the halteres in response to this left right movement is known as Coriolis force and can be produced when any moving object is rotated in the three directions of rotation, yaw, pitch or roll (see figure). When this occurs, tiny bell-shaped structures at the base of the haltere experience strain as the haltere stalk bends in their direction. The nervous system can then transform the bending of these hairs into electrical signals, which the fly interprets as body rotation information. The fly uses this information to make corrections to its position and thereby restabilizes itself during flight. Halteres may also be useful for other behaviors. Certain species of flies have been observed to oscillate their halteres while walking in addition to oscillating them during flight. In these individuals, halteres could thus be detecting sensory information during walking behavior as well. When the halteres are removed, these insects perform more poorly at certain walking challenges. However, how haltere information is processed and used during walking remains, with few exceptions, unclear. This result was initially attributed to the haltere's ability to sense and maintain equilibrium. In 1917 v. Buddenbrock asserted that something else was responsible for the flies' loss of flight ability. He claimed that the halteres should instead be considered "stimulation organs". In response to this new discovery, Pringle reexamined his previous assumption and came to the conclusion that flies were capable of detecting all three directions of rotation simply by comparing inputs from the left and right sides of the body. Of course, this is not the actual mechanism by which flies detect rotation. Different fields of sensory organs located in different regions at the base of each haltere detect the different directions of rotation, which also explains why flies with one haltere are still able to fly without issue. Another structure in the class Insecta also exists whose primary function is not the same as halteres, but that additionally serves a similar balancing function. This occurs in the order Lepidoptera and refers to the antennae of moths and butterflies. Though strepsipterans are very difficult to locate and are additionally rather short-lived, Pix et al. (1993) confirmed that the specialized forewings that male Strepsiptera possess perform the same function as dipteran halteres. Rotational movements of the body combined with the oscillating halteres produce Coriolis forces that can be detected by fields of mechanosensors (campaniform sensilla) located at the base of the halteres. Using functional morphology and behavior studies, Pix et al. showed that these sensors then transmit body position information to the head and abdomen to produce compensatory movements. Antennal movements in lepidopterans were originally hypothesized to aid in wind or gravity perception. A study performed using the hawk moth, Manduca sexta, confirmed that these tiny, antennal oscillations were actually contributing to body rotation sensation.). In insects, the thorax is separated into different segments. One of the things that the Hox gene Ultrabithorax (Ubx) is responsible for, is specifying the identity of the third thoracic segment of their body. Proper hindwing development in a number of insect species is dependent on Ubx, including butterflies, beetles, and flies. In fruit flies, (Ubx) is responsible for the formation of the halteres during metamorphosis. If this gene is experimentally deactivated, the haltere will develop into a fully formed wing. Other genes which are expressed in wings and repressed in halteres have also been identified, but whether or not they act as direct targets of Ubx regulation are still unknown.
Dynamics
[[File:Insect wing muscles.png|350px|thumb|left|Fly thorax showing side view of dorsal longitudinal (DLM; upper left) and dorso-ventral (DVM; upper right) power flight muscles. Bottom image shows transverse cross section of fly. The below figure demonstrates this movement with only the first set of muscles.
thumb|200px|right|Motion of an insect wing: <br />a wings <br />b primary and secondary flight joints <br />c dorsoventral flight muscles <br />d longitudinal muscles
The movement of the wings and the halteres are mechanically coupled. Sane et al. (2015) demonstrated that in freshly killed flies, without any neural input, the movement of wings was still coupled with the movement of halteres. When a forcep was used to manually move a wing up and down, not only did the opposite wing move in synchrony, the halteres also beat in antiphase with both wings. The source of this coupling however, was not between the muscles which control the halteres and those that control the wings. Instead, two small ridges of cuticle known as the subepimeral ridges were found to be responsible. These ridges connect the right wing to the right haltere and the left wing to the left haltere.
Flies typically hold their halteres at a 90-degree offset. To visualize this, if you were to imagine a person holding their arms out sideways, this would be a 180-degree offset. If that person then moved their arms backward so that the angle created between their fingertips and spine was 90 degrees, this would be a 90-degree offset. The halteres of flies work the same way. They are positioned behind their bodies, forming a 90-degree angle between the haltere bulbs and the center of their thorax. It is necessary for the halteres to be positioned like this in order to detect the three axes of motion. Those axes are yaw, pitch and roll, as illustrated in the above figure (Directions of rotation). The mechanoreceptors at the base of the halteres are only able to measure force in two directions (horizontal and vertical), so a single haltere is only able to measure rotations along two of the three axes. Because the halteres are set at different angles (90-degree offset), they also beat along two separate horizontal and vertical axes. This gives them the ability to acquire information from two non-parallel planes and allows sensation of rotation in all three directions. However, flies are most sensitive to pitch.
thumb|360x360px|Haltere length and shape varies from species to species.
Neurophysiology
When halteres are experimentally induced to flap, volleys of action potentials within the haltere nerve occur in synchrony with the haltere-beat frequency.
Muscles
Flies use indirect flight muscles to accomplish wing movement, and the beating haltere movements are driven by the same group of muscles (see dynamics section). In addition to the indirect flight muscles which are responsible for the flapping motion, there are also steering muscle which control the rotation/angle of the wings. Because fly halteres evolved from hindwings, the same complement of steering muscles exists for the other directions of movement as well. Chan et al. (1998) identified 10 direct control muscles in the haltere similar to those found in the forewing. In 1998, Chan and Dickinson proposed that the planned haltere movements (without external forces acting on them) were what initiated planned turns. To explain this, imagine a fly that wishes to turn to the right. Unfortunately, as soon as it does, the halteres sense a body rotation and reflexively correct the turn, preventing the fly from changing direction. Chan and Dickinson (1998) suggested that what the fly does to prevent this from occurring is to first move its halteres as if it were being pushed in the opposite direction that it wants to go. The fly has not moved, but the halteres have sensed a perturbation. This would allow the haltere-initiated reflex to occur, correcting the imagined perturbation. The fly would then be able to execute its turn in the desired direction. This is not how flies actually turn. Mureli and Fox (2015) showed that flies are still capable of performing planned turns even when their halteres have been removed entirely. are activated in response to strain created by movements at the haltere base in different directions (due to Coriolis forces acting on the end knobs).
Chordotonal organs
Chordotonal organs detect and transmit distortions in their position/shape in the same way that campaniform sensilla do. They differ slightly at their site of detection. Chordotonal organs, unlike campaniform sensilla, exist beneath the cuticle and typically respond to stretch as opposed to distortion or bending. Their sensory nerve endings attach between two internal points and when those points are stretched, the difference in length is what is detected and transformed into electrical signaling. There are far fewer chordotonal organs at the base of the haltere than campaniform sensilla (on the order of hundreds), so it is assumed that they are far less important for detecting and transmitting rotational information from haltere movements. From this result it can be concluded that although halteres are required for detecting fast rotations, the visual system is adept by itself at sensing and correcting for slower body movements. Thus, the visual and mechanosensory (halteres) systems work together to stabilize the visual field of the animal: first, by quickly responding to fast changes (halteres), and second, by maintaining that response until it is corrected (vision).
Visual-motor integration
Flies rely on both visual information from their compound eyes and mechanical input from their halteres. Sherman and Dickinson (2002) discovered that the responsiveness of the halteres and eyes are tuned to complementary speeds of rotation. Responses to body rotations detected via the visual system are greatest at slow speeds and decrease with increased angular velocity. In contrast, body rotations detected by the halteres elicit the greatest responses at higher angular velocities and degrade as the speed of rotation decreases. The integration of these two separately tuned sensors allows the flies to detect a wide range of angular velocities in all three directions of rotation.
Two main aspects of the visual field have been used to study fly vision, figure and background. Figures are the objects that the fly is focused on and background represents everything else. When haltere bulbs are removed from tethered flying flies, they are still able to track moving figures, but they struggle to stabilize moving backgrounds. If a static figure is placed in the field of view of a fly, its ability to stabilize a moving background is restored. This indicates that although halteres are not required for motion vision processing, they do contribute to it in a context-dependent manner, even when the behavior is separated from body rotations. Context determines whether the fly will use its halteres or vision as the primary source of body/head position information. Flies in the Calyptratae clade which include common flies like house flies, blow flies, and flesh flies also use their halteres during takeoff, whereas non-Calyptratae flies do not. Calyptratae flies are able to take off around five times faster than other flies. Calyptratae flies lacking halteres take a lot longer to become airborne, but takeoff time is not affected in non-Calyptratae flies without halteres. Stability during takeoff also suffers with haltere removal, but only in Calyptratae flies.