Clumsiness is a feature, not a bug
In the ungainly flight of the mosquito, neuroscientist Sweta Agrawal finds an unlikely teacher. At the University of British Columbia, she studies how insects sense their own bodies in motion — a capacity called proprioception — by placing the well-mapped fruit fly beside its clumsier Dipteran cousin, hoping that contrast will reveal what comparison alone can illuminate. Where vision neuroscience has long had its predictive frameworks, proprioception remains unmapped territory, and Agrawal believes the mosquito's awkwardness may be precisely the key that unlocks it.
- Proprioception — the nervous system's ability to know where the body is and what it is doing — remains one of neuroscience's least understood senses, lacking the organizing frameworks that have long guided vision research.
- Mosquitoes, with their dangling legs and lumbering flight, are neurologically distinct enough from fruit flies to make comparison meaningful, yet close enough that the same experimental tools apply — a rare and valuable middle ground.
- Agrawal's lab uses engineered mosquito lines to silence or illuminate proprioceptive neurons in real time, then runs identical experiments in fruit flies, hunting for the differences that reveal which features of self-sensing are universal and which are specialized.
- Beyond live experiments, her team examines campaniform sensilla — force-detecting sensors visible on insect exoskeletons — in museum specimens collected over centuries, mapping how evolution has distributed these structures across species.
- The research is converging toward a framework that could do for proprioception what comparative anatomy did for vision: predict, across body sizes and lifestyles, what a self-sensing system should look like and why.
Sweta Agrawal watches mosquitoes fly and sees something most people overlook: clumsiness. They lumber through the air with legs dangling, slower and less precise than fruit flies, their bodies arranged in ways she describes as "derpy." That awkwardness is exactly why she studies them. The mosquito's ungainly movement offers a window into one of neuroscience's stubborn questions — how does an animal know where its body is and what it is doing?
This is proprioception: the nervous system's capacity to sense itself in space, to distinguish self-generated motion from motion imposed from outside. Mechanosensory neurons embedded in muscles, tendons, and joints fire when those structures move, telling the brain what the body is doing. Agrawal, an assistant professor of zoology at the University of British Columbia, believes that comparing how mosquitoes and fruit flies solve this problem can reveal principles that apply across insects — perhaps across all animals.
The comparative approach has transformed vision neuroscience, producing frameworks that reliably predict what visual systems should look like in nocturnal versus diurnal animals. Proprioception has no such framework. No one has mapped how proprioceptive systems should change when body size shifts, when leg structure changes, when an animal's whole way of moving differs. Mosquitoes and fruit flies share deep ancestry within the order Diptera, but differ enough that comparing them should expose something fundamental.
Agrawal's path to mosquitoes began as an undergraduate intern at the American Museum of Natural History, where she studied the haltere — the repurposed hind wings of true flies, transformed from lift-generating structures into sensory organs that help flies stabilize in flight. That project taught her how profoundly self-sensing shapes movement, and how much comparison can reveal.
In her lab, she uses a mosquito line engineered to target proprioceptive neurons, allowing her to silence them entirely or watch them fire in real time using a fluorescent calcium indicator as she moves the mosquito's legs in controlled ways. Running identical experiments in fruit flies, she looks for what differs and what holds constant — the signature of universal versus specialized proprioception.
Her ambitions extend further still. Campaniform sensilla — dome-like mechanosensors embedded in an insect's exoskeleton — detect how much force the body experiences as it pushes against the ground. These structures are visible under a scanning electron microscope, meaning museum specimens collected decades or centuries ago can still reveal their neural architecture. By mapping sensor placement across species with different body sizes and lifestyles, Agrawal hopes to distinguish true evolutionary adaptation from mere genetic drift.
Museum collections, largely untapped for this kind of inquiry, represent an enormous and patient resource. Agrawal is building a research program that moves between the precision of the modern lab and the breadth of natural history — and the mosquito, clumsy as it is, has become her bridge between these two ways of knowing.
Sweta Agrawal watches mosquitoes fly and sees something most people miss: clumsiness. They lumber through the air with their legs dangling in front of them, moving slower than fruit flies, walking less often, their bodies arranged in ways that look, as she puts it, "derpy and kind of clumsy." But that awkwardness is precisely why she studies them. The mosquito's ungainly movement, so different from the fruit fly's precision, offers a window into one of neuroscience's stubborn questions: how does an animal know where its body is and what it's doing?
This is the problem of proprioception—the nervous system's ability to sense itself in space, to distinguish between movement the body generates and movement imposed from outside. It sounds simple until you try to explain it. Mechanosensory neurons embedded in muscles, tendons, and joints fire when those structures move, sending signals that tell the brain: this motion came from me. Agrawal, an assistant professor of zoology at the University of British Columbia, believes that by comparing how mosquitoes and fruit flies solve this problem, she can uncover principles that apply across insects—maybe across all animals.
The comparative approach is not new. Neuroscientists studying vision have built elaborate frameworks predicting what visual systems should look like in nocturnal versus diurnal animals, and those predictions hold. But proprioception lacks such a framework. No one has mapped out what features should change when body size changes, when leg structure changes, when an animal's whole way of moving shifts. Mosquitoes and fruit flies are close enough—both belong to the order Diptera, both have been shaped by millions of years of shared ancestry—but different enough that comparing them should reveal something fundamental.
Agrawal's path to mosquitoes began in a museum. As an undergraduate, she interned at the American Museum of Natural History, where she studied the haltere, a structure unique to true flies. Most insects have two pairs of wings. In Diptera, the hind wings have been repurposed: they no longer generate lift but have become almost purely sensory organs, covered in sensors that help flies stabilize in flight. That project taught her something crucial—that the nervous system's ability to sense itself matters enormously for how an animal moves. It also taught her the power of comparison. When she started her own lab, she knew what she wanted to do.
Mosquitoes made sense. Researchers had already adapted tools from fruit fly neuroscience to work in mosquitoes, meaning a community of scientists and established methods existed. But the insects were different enough to matter. Locusts and stick insects, which other researchers study for proprioception, are too distant from fruit flies to make clean comparisons; the experimental techniques differ too much. Mosquitoes occupy a sweet spot: related enough to use similar methods, different enough to reveal how proprioception changes.
In her lab, Agrawal uses a mosquito line developed by Craig Montell's group at UC Santa Barbara, engineered to target proprioceptive sensory neurons. She can knock out these neurons entirely or use a fluorescent calcium indicator called GCaMP to watch them fire in real time as she moves the mosquito's legs in controlled ways. Then she compares those recordings to identical experiments in fruit flies. The differences—and similarities—between the two insects' neural responses to the same mechanical stimulation should expose which features of proprioception are universal and which are specialized.
But Agrawal's ambitions extend beyond the lab. Her team is also studying campaniform sensilla, specialized mechanosensors that sit atop dome-like structures embedded in an insect's exoskeleton. As an animal pushes against the ground, the exoskeleton distorts slightly, and these sensors detect that deformation, signaling how much force the body is experiencing. The domes are visible under a scanning electron microscope, which means you can look at museum specimens—insects collected decades or centuries ago—and map where these sensors are distributed across different species. By comparing sensor placement across insects with different body sizes and shapes, Agrawal can begin to disentangle which features are adaptations to a particular way of life and which are simply evolutionary drift, changes that accumulated without selective pressure.
Museum collections, largely untapped for this kind of work, represent an enormous resource. An insect pinned and labeled a hundred years ago can still reveal its neural architecture. Agrawal is building a research program that moves between the precision of the modern lab—where she can measure individual neurons firing—and the breadth of natural history, where she can see how evolution has distributed sensors across the tree of life. The mosquito, clumsy and derpy as it is, has become her bridge between these two ways of knowing.
Citações Notáveis
For proprioception, we don't necessarily have a great framework like that— Sweta Agrawal, on the lack of established principles for how proprioception varies across species
Model systems are awesome. But there are benefits to looking at other species and doing this compare-contrast process, because I think you can learn a lot— Sweta Agrawal, on the value of comparative biology
A Conversa do Hearth Outra perspectiva sobre a história
Why mosquitoes specifically? There are thousands of insects you could study.
They're close enough to fruit flies that we can use the same tools and methods, but different enough that we should see real differences in how their proprioceptive systems work. That gap between similarity and difference is where you learn something.
What would those differences look like?
A mosquito's body is larger, its legs are structured differently, it moves more slowly and walks less often than a fruit fly. When you apply the same mechanical stimulus to a mosquito leg versus a fruit fly leg, the neurons might respond differently in timing, intensity, or pattern. Those differences tell you what's essential versus what's specialized.
And you're comparing neurons directly?
Yes. We use the same recording techniques in both insects—we can watch the same proprioceptive neurons fire in response to the same kinds of leg movements. That direct comparison is only possible because the tools already existed in mosquitoes.
What about the museum work? How does that fit in?
Museums give us access to evolutionary diversity we can't study in the lab. We can look at how proprioceptive sensors are distributed across hundreds of insect species with different body plans. That tells us whether sensor placement is an adaptation or just drift.
So you're building a map?
Exactly. A map of how proprioception varies across insects, grounded in both the precision of neural recording and the breadth of natural history.