In pictures: Mayflies and macaques
- Published
Imre Potyo's picture of Danube mayflies (Ephoron virgo) swarming in the night sky over the banks of the Raba river in Hungary, has won the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition.
Photographers were asked to submit images for the categories of Behaviour, Ecology and Environmental Science, Evolutionary Biology and Micro-imaging. A griffon vulture searches for scraps of food inside the ribcage of a large mammal in Jonathan Diaz-Marba's entry, the runner-up in the Behaviour category.
A special commendation in the same category went to Alexandre Bonnefoy for this photo of a group of Japanese macaques huddling together during a snowstorm.
Tane Sinclair-Taylor's shot of a juvenile clown fish in a colourless habitat won the Ecology and Environmental Science category. The fish was spotted during a research cruise documenting devastating post-bleaching coral mortality in the Farasan Banks on Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast.
"This photograph was taken on Royal Bay, located on the island of South Georgia, where I observed gentoo penguins 'decorating' their nest with guano," said Tegwen Gadais, runner-up in the Ecology and Environmental Science category.
Mark Cowan received a special commendation for Butterflies and caiman, taken on an expedition studying reptile and amphibian diversity in the Amazon.
Nick Robertson-Brown's image of an eagle ray swimming over a reef with its prey off Grand Cayman won the Evolutionary Biology category.
This 35mm (1.3in) train worm was photographed in an aquarium by Fredrik Pleijel, runner-up in the Evolutionary Biology category.
Maria Carbajo Sanchez's image, magnified 5,000 times to show the surface of an activated carbon grain, won the The Micro-imaging category.
Tyler Square was the runner-up with this shot inside a one-day-old African house snake egg. "During early growth and development, most vertebrate animals look quite similar," said Square. "Here, the 5mm-long elongated body of the snake develops as a spiral to fit inside the egg."