ABOVE: Recent work questions the conclusion of 30-year-old research that leg bands affect the mating success of male zebra finches.
WOLFGANG FORSTMEIER
What can males wear to look sexier? For zebra finches, the trick seemed simple: add a dash of red to their legs. Research conducted in the 1980s found that slipping red bands onto the legs of male birds turned them into sex magnets. Those studies became iconic in sexual selection research because they provided something rare in the discipline: strong, consistent effects. But data accumulated in recent years question these influential findings.
Zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata) are native Australian birds with a bright red-orange beak. They form monogamous breeding pairs in which the male and female cooperate to raise young. Easy to rear in captivity, zebra finches are model organisms for research in cognition and sexual selection.
In the 1980s, ornithologist Nancy Burley, then at the University of Illinois, ...
