Maratus males are among the smallest animals known for elaborate courtship. At roughly four to five millimetres, a male lifts his abdomen, spreads flaps of coloured cuticle to either side and holds the third pair of legs upright, waving them while shuffling from side to side in front of the female.
The colour is largely structural. Nanostructured scales interfere with light to produce the blues and reds, and in some species neighbouring patches are near-black, reflecting very little light and raising the apparent contrast of the display. The performance also has an acoustic channel: the male sends vibrational signals through the substrate that the female detects through her legs.
The genus was small until recently. More than a hundred Maratus species are now described, most of them since 2011, and the taxonomy continues to move as amateur photographers and specialists find new populations across Australia.