The scientific journal "BMC Ecology", dedicated to ecology in its various manifestations (from bacteria to plants and animals), has announced the winners of the annual contest of the best environmental photographs.
The works selected by experts, showing the diversity of the natural world in photographs, are presented below.
1. The main winner of the competition. A Palestinian sunbird drinks thistle nectar.
2. Editor's Choice. A young baboon studies what his friend eats.
3. Second place overall. Indian marabou - the most actively endangered species of storks - rummage in the city garbage heap in Guwahati (India, Assam).
4. Winner in the Behavioral and Psychological Ecology category. A firefly in Chile swings its antenna in search of a female.
5. A child collects fallen baobab fruit in western Madagascar.
6. An ant got entangled in the sticky tentacles of a round-leaved sundew, an insectivorous plant that is widespread in Japan.
7. Asian black bears enjoy the sun in Pakistan.
8. Symbiosis of weaver ants (protect against predators) and caterpillars (produce sugary substance).
9. A female bat flew about 700 miles with her cub to a "maternity cave" in the Altar Desert (Mexico). There she joined 100,000 other individuals to give birth to offspring.
10. Big-eyed snake (a snake of the already-shaped family) near a man in a rice field in Indonesia.
11. A South African long-tongued fly with a proboscis that can stretch up to 5 cm in length drinks from agapanthus (a perennial herb of the agapanth family).
12. Residents of the pillar under the pier in the bay of South Australia: starfish (shetland argus), blue ascidians, sponges, brown and red algae.
13. The broad-nosed lemur eats 10 times more cyanide than would be enough to kill other mammals of its size. The poison is found in the lemur's main food source, the Madagascar giant bamboo.
14. Phryn (zhgutonogoy spider) - a direct relative of spiders and scorpions, the size of a human hand - eats another spider in the national park of Ecuador.
15. Terns (birds of the order Charadriiformes) are known for their courtship dances. Pictured is a parent and their calf born from the second breeding of the season, which is rare and in this case following a hurricane that destroyed many nests. The photo was taken on the coral island of Heron (Australia).
See also anekdotig:
- Newsletter: " Scientists have recorded the 6th human-caused extinction of species on Earth " (June 25, 2016)
- Article: " Lost contact with nature ".
- Photo-article: " Friendship without borders in photographs ".
- Photo-article: " Born by Nature ".