{"id":80649,"date":"2025-08-19T19:24:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T19:24:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/80649\/"},"modified":"2025-08-19T19:24:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-19T19:24:11","slug":"stunning-photo-competition-focuses-on-how-nature-survives-and-thrives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/80649\/","title":{"rendered":"Stunning Photo Competition Focuses on How Nature Survives and Thrives"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Two<\/a>Overall Winner \u2013 Two male saigas, famous for their large noses, fight each other on the steppes of Central Asia. | Andrey Giljov, a Senior Lecturer at Saint Petersburg State University. <\/p>\n

Entered by researchers from around the world, the BMC Ecology and Evolution and BMC Zoology image competition celebrates nature\u2019s will to survive and thrive. <\/p>\n

\u201cSaiga fights in spring, outside of the tournament season, are quieter and more about training than determining status. However, the males take every opportunity to practice,\u201d says this year\u2019s winner Andrey Giljov, a Senior Lecturer at Saint Petersburg State University. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo photograph the saigas from ground level, we had to set up a camouflaged hide near this so-called social arena. We had to conceal ourselves in the dark to avoid scaring off approaching saigas or making unnecessary noise; otherwise, the animals would not come close.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collective and Social Behavior <\/p>\n

The competition has four categories: \u2018Collective Social Behaviour\u2019, \u2018Life in Motion\u2019, \u2018Colourful Strategies\u2019, and \u2018Research in Action\u2019. Anyone affiliated with a research institution is welcome to participate. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>Winner of the Collective and Social Behavior category. Sritam Kumar Sethy, a student at Berhampur University. <\/p>\n

The winning photograph by Sritam Kumar Sethy captured newly hatched nymphs of Acanthocoris scaber clustered tightly together on the underside of a leaf. Sritam explains that this grouping behaviour serves multiple purposes: \u201cBy coming together, they enhance their protection against predators, reducing the chances of any individual becoming prey. This collective arrangement also provides better access to vital resources like food and moisture, which is crucial during their vulnerable early stages of life.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>Runner up in the Collective and Social Behavior category <\/p>\n

Second place went to Associate Professor Nick Royle, a behavioural ecologist and conservation biologist at the University of Exeter, for his image of a mother burying beetle feeding her developing larvae on the carcass of a mouse, regurgitating processed meat to her begging offspring.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis behaviour normally occurs underground, so is not usually visible to us, but is here pictured in the lab where these burying beetles are used as a model to understand the evolution of social behaviours such as parental care,\u201d explains Royle. <\/p>\n

Life in Motion <\/p>\n

The \u2018Life in Motion\u2019 category was won by a digital artist who created an image of Pterosaurs in flight above the Jurassic Hebridean Basin. <\/p>\n

\"Three<\/a>Winner of Life in Motion. | Natalia Jagielska <\/p>\n

\u201cThe Jurassic Hebridean Basin once covered what is now Scotland. This water body formed a pathway to the Boreal Sea, an area currently known as the North Pole. The sea was teeming with life, and recent discoveries of margin-marine deposits have yielded two pterosaur skeletons: a 2.5-meter wingspan pterosaur known as Dearc, and a smaller, crested pterosaur called Ceoptera,\u201d says Natalia Jagielska, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. <\/p>\n

\u201cDespite their differing cranial anatomies, teeth morphology, and wing shapes, these pterosaurs could interact and compete for food during periods of environmental stress. Set 170 million years ago in the Middle Jurassic, this image portrays these flying reptiles as they hunt along the shoreline.\u201d <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>Runner up in the Life in Motion category. | Alwin Hardenbol <\/p>\n

Alwin Hardenbol, a Postdoctoral researcher at the Natural Resources Institute Finland, captured a remarkable photo of a breaching humpback whale from a rib boat in Varanger, Norway.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo photograph breaching properly, you need to be at the ready constantly as it happens very spontaneously, and the best moments are over in just a few seconds. Breaching is a fascinating behaviour from a scientific perspective, as it is still inconclusive what purpose it serves. Researchers have suggested multiple reasons, including communication, play, or the loosening of skin parasites,\u201d says Hardenbol. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn terms of communication, breaching, along with other surface behaviours like tail slapping and flipper slapping, produces loud sounds, especially underwater, and can be heard from a considerable distance. That breaching creates such a loud sound is probably unsurprising, as these animals can weigh up to 40 metric tonnes. It\u2019s unbelievable to imagine how such an animal can even jump out of the water like that. To achieve a nice breach (>\u200990% out of the water), Humpback whales must move around 29 km per hour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Colorful Strategies\"Close-up Winner of the \u2018Colourful Strategies\u2019 category. | Dr Abhijeet Bayani[\/caption] <\/p>\n

Dr Abhijeet Bayani, a biologist from the Indian Institute of Science, captured the winning image for the \u2018Colourful strategies\u2019 category. <\/p>\n

Some beetles use clever visual tricks called deimatic displays to scare or confuse predators. For example, they might suddenly reveal eyespots, markings that look like large eyes, to mimic larger predators or make themselves appear bigger or more threatening than they really are. These displays are a great example of how insects use colour as part of their survival strategy. <\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>Runner up in the \u2018Colourful Strategies\u2019 category. | Sritam Kumar Sethy<\/p>\n

\u201cThe frog\u2019s camouflage serves a dual purpose: it helps evade predators such as snakes and birds while also providing the perfect disguise for ambushing prey,\u201d says runner up Sethy. \u201cWith patience and precision, it hunts small insects, millipedes, and worms, relying not on speed but on invisibility and timing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Research in Action \"A<\/a>Winner of the \u2018Research in Action\u2019 category. | Nick Royle <\/p>\n

Nick Royle at the University of Exeter won Best in Category for \u2018Research in Action.\u2019 His photo captures a male blue ground beetle (Carabus intricatus), which was photographed on a spring night in a temperate rainforest in southwest England. The beetle waits in a falcon tube before being fitted with a miniature, backpack-like radio tag that allows the team to track its movements and behaviour over the following two weeks as it searches for food and mates.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/a>Runner up in the \u2018Research in Action\u2019 category. | Jack Bamber <\/p>\n

This camera-trap image was captured in Scotland\u2019s Cairngorms as part of a non-invasive monitoring study on capercaillie. The capercaillie is a ground-nesting bird at risk of extinction in the UK, with fewer than 600 individuals left. It shows a mother capercaillie in the background, carefully watching over her brood of four poults as they take a dust bath.<\/p>\n

Highly Commended \"A<\/a>\u2018Each autumn, vast flocks of Barnacle Geese embark on a long-distance journey from their Arctic breeding grounds to their wintering sites along the coasts of Western Europe. Finland serves as a vital stopover where the geese rest and refuel to build up the fat reserves needed for the second half of their 2,000-mile journey.\u2019 | Alwin Hardenbol \"A<\/a>Two Brahminy Kites battle mid-air over a freshly-caught eel. | Delip K. Das from the University of Groningen.
\n \"A<\/a>A jewelled gecko in the shrubs of the Otago Peninsula. | Jonathan Goldenberg from the University of Oslo. <\/p>\n

The BMC Ecology and Evolution published the photo competition here<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Overall Winner \u2013 Two male saigas, famous for their large noses, fight each other on the steppes of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,61255,61256,460,134,18360,61257,337,43885,6620],"class_list":["post-80649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bmc","tag-bmcecologyandevolution","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-naturephotography","tag-photocompetition","tag-research","tag-research-science","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}