[slow upbeat music] The sheer diversity of insects on the planet means even common species can reveal answers to questions about evolution.

Mysteries that scientsts like Dr. Ummat Somjee are solving, one bug at a time.

One of the most exciting things about my job is that when I go out for a walk in the forest, I find a little mantis.

Every single time I'll go out, I'll see a species of insect that I've never seen before.

Well, this isn't technically a bug, but it's cool.

It's an incredible experience to always be ready to have that opportunity to be amazed, surprised and have that wonder.

[quick uplifting music] [music fades] [fast exciting music] Many years ago, I came across this insect that had these giant, brightly colored flags on its legs.

[fast exciting music] [insects chirping] When I approached it, it lifted up its leg and waved it and this really elegant way.

[fast exciting music] And when I looked into the literature, I found out nobody had studied it before.

Nobody knew why it did that waving behavior.

And I was amazed.

I was like, here's this extremely beautiful insect, it's relatively common in the area, people know about it, but nobody knows why it has these brightly colored flags.

So, I started to investigate this here in Panama by trying to rear these insects in a little greenhouse I constructed called The Bug Hut.

[music fades] [birds chirping] We're working with two species of these flag footed bugs.

This is the matador bug.

It has these brightly colored yellow and orange and black flags, and this yellow and black stripe pattern on its wings.

[slow techno-style music] These insects are plant feeders.

They're specialized on feeding on plant tissue, and they have this long, thin straw-like mouth part that is protected by a sheath.

And when they come across a plant, they'll use their mouth part to pierce into the plant tissue and suck out phloem from the plant.

And also they'll pierce through the bottom of a flower and feed on nectar.

And so they have these specialized mouth parts to feed on these different parts of the plant tissue.

[music fades] This bug is gorgeous.

Those bright flags, they really stand out!

When I first saw these traits, I assumed that they might be used in sexual selection or in competition for mating opportunities.

But the more we looked into it, the more we found that this might not be the case.

First of all, we found that both males and females have these brightly colored traits.

And the second clue was that waving behavior they perform is done by both males and females, and they don't seem to be doing it to each other.

[birds chirping] Here we have the second species.

Got it.

This is diactor.

You see morphologically, they're really similar.

They have the same kind of body shape, and these big tibial flags.

Its wings are very dark black, and its flags are very different colors.

When I started studying these bugs, I thought I could catch them with my hands.

I would reach out to grab them, and I would often come up empty handed.

They were really good at flying away.

[quick uplifting music] I later realized that something I thought would be an impediment to flight, something that made these bugs look like they would-- it'd be difficult for them to fly, might actually allow them to fly with greater agility through the air.

[quick uplifting music] And we are finding that these flags act to stabilize flight and might allow these insects to make sharper turns in the air.

So far from being an impediment, these flags might increase agility of these insects during flight.

So we're finding that, like a Swiss Army Knife, this leg has multiple different functions, and we often find that's often how evolution works on these traits.

We are also finding that that waving behavior might be used to distract predators' attack away from their body and towards this appendage, which is detachable.

We often find that they are missing legs in nature, and so they might distract a predator and then fly away.

[slow serene music] We're at the stage of discovery now where we can look into the world of insects and ask these questions about extremely conspicuous and beautiful insects, and try to discover more things about how evolution works, how natural selection shapes these diverse systems.

[slow serene music] And insects provide one of the most remarkable examples of very different ways that life can be on the planet.

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