In nature, flashy displays usually scream courtship. Peacocks fan iridescent trains, peacock spiders dance in sequined shorts, and all the glitter serves one end: to impress a mate. So when Panama’s matador bugs – Anisoscelis alipes – waggle bright, banner-like hind legs, the obvious guess has been sexual selection.
But a new Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) study says the leg-waving isn’t a love signal at all.
“The very nature of discovery is that we can’t anticipate where our questions lead,” said STRI postdoctoral fellow Ummat Somjee, whose work on sexual selection and insect weaponry has been widely covered.
“By following our curiosity we sometimes arrive at unexpected realities, leading us to reevaluate the very questions we asked in the first place.”
Matador bugs put to the test
Sexual selection leaves a telltale pattern. In species with showy male ornaments, males tend to carry bigger, brighter structures than females, and they show them off more often – especially at close range to suitors or rivals.
The STRI-led team, with collaborators in the UK, Panama, the United States, Switzerland, and Germany, set out to test whether matador bugs fit that script.
They first gave each wild-caught bug a tiny dot of nontoxic paint so individuals could be tracked. Then, in a screened enclosure, they released the insects in groups of three, stepped out, and let the cameras roll.
Over repeated trials, they recorded positions every couple of minutes, later combing through full-session video to measure how often and how long the bugs waved and how far apart they were when they did. By the end, they had logged more than 745 flag-waving bouts.
Showy legs aren’t about mating
The pattern was striking for how unsexy it was. Flag size scaled with body size in both sexes, but females – though generally larger – did not carry disproportionately bigger flags than males of the same size. Males and females waved about as often and at similar rates.
Most telling, waving tended to happen when other bugs were farther away, not at close quarters where courtship and rivalry typically unfold. Whether the trio was all male, all female, or mixed didn’t change the behavior.
Taken together, the evidence points away from signaling to mates or rivals. For matador bugs, flamboyant feet are probably not about impressing anyone.
Bugs wave to stay alive
If sex isn’t the driver, another explanation rises to the top: predator distraction. In the wild, nearly one in six matador bugs is missing a hind leg. That’s a lot of lost limbs in exactly the spot where those flashy flags are.
The team suspects the bright, mobile banners operate like a bullfighter’s cape – drawing attacks away from vital body parts. Sacrificing a leg is bad, but it’s better than being eaten.
Future experiments will directly test this idea, for instance by observing predator strikes with and without flags or by manipulating color and motion to see what attackers target.
The researchers aren’t ruling out other functions either; flags could startle predators, misdirect their aim, or even act as a general “back off” signal to larger animals without being a specialized sexual signal.
Flashy bugs spark new solutions
Matador bugs aren’t just jungle curiosities. In Panama and neighboring Costa Rica, they’re common pests on passion fruit (Passiflora edulis) farms. If the flags are indeed decoys for predators, that insight could inform pest management.
Encouraging natural enemies – or even designing low-toxicity lures that exploit the bugs’ own signaling – might offer alternatives to broad-spectrum insecticides that harm beneficial insects as well.
Good ideas start with careful natural history. Until now, the matador bug’s signature behavior was famous mostly as a striking photograph on guidebook covers. This study turns the image into data.
Fieldwork beats the feed
Much of the project’s grunt work fell to early-career researchers tracking painted bugs under tropical heat. For first author and University of Manchester undergraduate intern Cameron Longbottom, the field season was transformational.
“Being in the field in Panama is so different from watching Avatar on the internet,” he said. “To see animals in their own habitats – you don’t get that in many places. there is still so much to learn.”
Showiness can also mean survival
Charles Darwin wrestled with the strange logic of ornamentation and ultimately proposed sexual selection to explain it. That theory remains a powerful lens, but it isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to every bright color or exaggerated appendage.
The matador bug’s neon leg flags remind us that conspicuous traits can evolve for reasons other than romance – especially if they help animals survive long enough to reproduce.
For now, the verdict is clear: the leg-waving that made these insects famous doesn’t help them flirt. It likely helps them live.
The study is published in the journal Current Zoology.
Image Credit: Steven Paton
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