BMC Ecology image competition: results
Well, it’s that time of year when we get to post lots of nice pictures courtesy of the open access journal BMC Ecology. Each year BMC Ecology runs a photographic image competition to celebrate biodiversity and the beauty of the natural environment, and this year it coincides with St Andrews Photography Festival which is a nice coincidence! The theme of this year’s competition was the interaction between nature and human activity and technology.
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| Overall winner: “The striking landscape of the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park during sunrise. This south African park is characterized by vast arid landscapes with red dunes, sparse vegetation and camel thorn trees.” Attribution: Davide Gaglio. CC BY |
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| Winner, Community, Population, and Macroecology: “I was snorkeling in a remote lagoon in the Sudanese Red Sea when I was suddenly surrounded by hundreds of spinner dolphins. The school stayed around for hours, visibly enjoying the interaction with snorkelers in the water. The school was clearly subdivided into dozens of smaller groups of either females with their offspring or adult males.” Attribution: Julia Spät. CC BY |
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| “This photo of a herd of waterbuck in the morning mist was taken by a motion-detecting trail camera in the Gorongosa National Park in Mozambique. A network of fifty trail cameras were set up by Paola Bouley, a researcher who is studying how the lion population is rebounding in Gorongosa after decades of war devastated wildlife populations. Hundreds of thousands of photos that she and her team have collected are available for citizen scientists to help her identify on the website WildCam Gorongosa. Waterbuck are a common sight in Gorongosa as their population has exploded to over 34,000 individuals up from only a few hundred after the war. Scientists are studying the waterbuck population to learn why they are experiencing such rapid growth.” Attribution: Chuck Schultz (Science Education Department, Howard Hughes Medical Institute). CC BY |
This is just a small selection of the images published this year, in total there were 26 images, all licensed under a CC BY attribution licence, so they are free to reuse, copy and distribute.
The Editorial complete with all images can be found here: 10.1186/s12898-016-0090-z
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| “This image was taken in Adelaide Botanic garden [in 2016]. Rainbow lorikeets are such colorful parrots that it is hard to mistake them for other species. The related Scaly-breasted lorikeet is similar in size and shape, but can be distinguished by its all-green head and body.” Attribution: Abd Al-Bar Al-Farha (University of Adelaide, Australia). CC BY |
