美国费城宾夕法尼亚大学的克里斯汀·布朗（Kristen Brown）的整体获胜图像描绘了杰克·菲什（Jack Fish）的一所学校，在澳大利亚大堡礁的苍鹭岛上的螺旋形成中。克里斯汀·布朗（Kristen Brown）说：“这张形象既代表了我们海洋的美丽和赏金，也代表了海洋环境中发生的螺旋危机。珊瑚礁具有高珊瑚覆盖的珊瑚礁和大量的鱼类种群，在大堡礁的苍鹭岛上，可悲的是变得更加稀少。在不集中努力以减少温室气体排放和提高水质的情况下，我们知道它们在我们一生内就有消失的风险。”高级编辑委员会成员约瑟夫·斯泰勒（Josef Settele）建议该条目说：“海洋生物多样性维持了我们星球的生命和健康，但人类的活动威胁着世界海洋的福祉。克里斯汀·布朗（Kristen Brown）的惊人形象是需要集中努力来管理生物多样性损失和设定保护优先级的象征。”

亚军和最佳图像进化发展生物学和生物多样性”

我们的亚军和此类别的最佳形象是由研究西伯利亚东南部贝加尔湖的生态学家Kseniya Vereshchagina提交的。贝加尔湖是世界上最古老，最深的湖泊之一，引起了丰富，特别是独特的淡水动物区系。但是，Kseniya解释说，在重工业和积极旅游业的地区，“对沿海社区产生了重大影响。”Kseniya和她在Irkutsk State University的实验室小组发现，在强烈的人类活动领域，流行两亲甲壳类动物的免疫力削弱了，使它们更容易受到寄生虫感染的影响。Kseniya告诉我们，这张图显示了“一个流行的两栖甲壳类动物密集地覆盖着堆积纤毛的层状菌落”。贝加尔湖对生态学家和进化生物学家拥有非凡的科学价值。这样的研究强调了将人类活动对这个宝贵站点的影响最小化的必要性。

Behavioral Ecology

This stark winning image for the ‘Behavioral Ecology category’ was submitted by an evolutionary biologist and conservation photographer affiliated with the University of Valencia, Spain. Roberto tells us that “Spiders are one of the most sophisticated hunters on earth. Nevertheless, they cannot escape from what evolution has provided to other species. In particular, some groups of wasps are specialized in hunting spiders and use them as a trophic resource for their larvae. I found this epic scene in a wall of a biological station in Tiputini, Ecuador.”

Population Ecology

罗伯托·加西亚·罗阿（RobertoGarcía-Roa）也提交了“人口生态”类别的获胜图像。罗伯托说：“成千上万的士兵白蚁能够在一个复杂的社会环境中迁移，在一个复杂的社会环境中，每个人都有自己的任务以全球目标：殖民地的生存和繁殖。在这种情况下，这些白蚁使用一块废弃的绳索遍布马来西亚森林。一旦人类消失，大自然就会恢复其空间，并利用所需的东西来生存。”

Human Evolution and Ecology

罗伯托·加西亚·罗阿（RobertoGarcía-Roa）捕获了这个题为“学习人类”的冠军。灵长类动物可以是研究人类运动演变的有用模型。To caption this winning image, Roberto García-Roa’s writes, “To understand our present and predict our future, humans aim to gain enough knowledge to fill the gap of our past. Bipedalism, for example, is probably one of the most critical steps in our evolutionary history. How did it happen? With just a few seconds to capture this scene in France, I was allowed to photograph how a baboon Papio learnt to walk on two legs in a project that aims to investigate how bipedalism evolved in hominids.”

Ecological Developmental Biology

Our winner in this category was an entry by Chey Chapman, a PhD student studying the mechanisms underlying zebrafish tissue regeneration at the Royal Veterinary College, the University of London. Mammals cannot repair severe damage to tissues – a severed limb does not grow back. However, zebrafish have a spectacular ability to regenerate various tissues after traumatic injury. Chey tells us that “This image shows the blood vessels in a regenerated zebrafish tail fin two weeks after clipping at the horizontal white line. Whether regeneration is a primitive or adaptive trait to environmental conditions is the subject of much debate, and the mechanisms underlying the regeneration process are not yet fully understood. Transgenic zebrafish, such as the line used to generate this image, are an important tool to help us better understand why some animals have the power of regeneration by allowing the visualization of certain cell types labelled by fluorescent reporters.”

Editor’s Pick

新热带野生动植物与环境研究研究所的Dimitri ouboter的编辑选秀《埃里·缠扰者》（Eerie Stalker），苏里南（Suriname）捕获了巨大的角斗士青蛙秒，然后逃脱出了一场未遂的蛇袭击。以前曾观察到巨型角斗士青蛙，通过发出遇险电话，跳跃和膨胀肺部逃脱了蛇的颌骨，这使小蛇更难抓住它们。

Many congratulations to all of our winners! Their images have been released under a Creative Commons Attribution License (cc by), so everyone is welcome and encouraged to share them freely, as long as you clearly attribute the image author.