THIS stunning selection of images showcases the world鈥檚 biodiversity to highlight the importance of protecting it. The pictures represent some of the winners and runners-up of this year鈥檚 BMC Ecology and Evolution photography competition, which invited researchers to submit images that they think encapsulate the diversity of animals and plants.
The main image is the overall winner, taken by coral reef ecologist Kristen Brown. She captured this school of jack fish at Heron Island in Australia鈥檚 Great Barrier Reef, and describes the scene as a metaphor for the climate change, pollution and overfishing crisis spiralling out of control in and around the world鈥檚 oceans.
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The winning image in the Population Ecology category by evolutionary biologist Roberto Garc铆a-Roa shows soldier termites using an abandoned rope to migrate across a forest in Malaysia.
Kseniya Vereshchagina, an ecologist who studies Lake Baikal in Siberia, was the overall runner-up for her image of Eulimnogammarus verrucosus with a fluffy parasitic infection. Heavy industry and tourism in the lake weakens the immunity of these crustaceans, making them more susceptible to such things.
The winning image in the Behavioural Ecology category was also taken by Garc铆a-Roa, and shows a wasp capturing a spider on the wall of a biological station in Ecuador.
