The image above by Kristen Brown shows a school of jackfish swimming in a spiral at the Great Barrier Reef. It was the overall winner in the 2021 photo competition from the scientific journal BMC Ecology and Evolution. The picture also won in the category Conservation Biology.
The competition attracted entries from researchers all around the world eager to use their creativity to highlight their work and capture the diversity of the planet's flora and fauna. BMC Ecology and Evolution invited anyone affiliated with a research institution to submit to one of the following six categories: ‘Conservation Biology', 'Evolutionary Developmental Biology and Biodiversity', 'Behavioural Ecology', 'Human Evolution and Ecology', ‘Population Ecology' and 'Ecological Developmental Biology'.
Our Senior Editorial Board Members lent their expertise to judge the entrants to the competition, selecting the overall winner, runner up and best image from each category. The board members considered the scientific story behind the photos submitted in addition to their artistic judgement (Fig. 1).
The winner in the Evolutionary Developmental Biology and Biodiversity category, and overall runner-up, is from Kseniya Vereshchagina. It shows a crustacean in Lake Baikal in Siberia suffering from a parasitic ciliate infection.
Roberto García-Roa took a picture of a wasp devouring a spider in Ecuador, and won the Behavioral Ecology category.
García-Roa also won the Population Ecology category with this image of migrating soldier termites. The picture is entitled "Big Small Migration."
The category of Human Evolution and Ecology was won by another photo by Roberto García-Roa, titled “Learning to Be Human.” It shows a researcher studying the movements of a baboon.
A zebrafish fin was clipped, and grew the appendage back in just two weeks. A photograph of this growth by Chey Chapman won the category of Ecological Developmental Biology.
The special award for Editor's Pick goes to this image of a giant gladiator frog escaping from a snake in Suriname. It was taken by Dimitri Ouboter.
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You can read the story behind about each of the winning images at BMC Ecology and Evolution.
(All images licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0)