An overnight frost combined with mist at sunrise made for a captivating image of a snake’s head fritillary in Tamworth, Staffordshire
JAY BIRMINGHAM
An atlas moth, which can have a wingspan of up to 23cm, is found on an areca nut plantation surrounded by evergreen forest in Sirsi, western India
UDAY HEGDE
The aplosonyx nigriceps beetle, pictured in Guangxi, China, has developed a clever tactic to eat the leaves of the poisonous giant taro: it nibbles a 3cm circle on the leaves to cut off toxin transmission before feasting inside the circle free of poison
MINGHUI YUAN
In this fluorescence microphotograph taken by Jan Martinek, a plant cell biology student in the Czech Republic, yellow pollen tubes can be seen growing through the blue pistil of the thale cress to fertilise the ovules. Martinek explains: “This sample was chemically cleared so the plant tissues become partially transparent and the pollen tubes growing inside the pistil can be seen”
JAN MARTINEK
The photographer, Harald Cederlund, says: ‘I am fascinated by the schistidium mosses. The intricate capsules look like tiny flowers when viewed up close. With the peristome teeth extended, the capsule is only about 1mm wide, yet from afar the mosses often give a drab blackish impression. They thrive on exposed surfaces such as rocks on the shoreline or forest edge and persist unnoticed on concrete slabs in city locations. I picked this one up from a concrete foundation close to where I live in Ulleraker, Sweden, and shot it in my living room. By combining long exposures with a flash I could create some ambience and not just a black background’
HARALD CEDERLUND
A male banded demoiselle — a large metallic damselfly with butterfly-like wings — soaked in dew is captured in all its disco glory in the Netherlands. The photographer says: “I like to emphasise the beauty of these insects by showing their strength and vulnerability. I’m not after a record shot, more an emotional portrait — maybe this is due to my background as a portrait photographer’”
WIM VOOIJS
Starlings living in Berlin’s Alexanderplatz enjoy some of the local delicacies
ANTON TREXLER
The view from under water as seawater crashes on rocks and through a sea fan in Aruba, in the Dutch Caribbean
ANGELO RICHARDSON
A bird feasts on termites in India. The photographer, Anirban Dutta, says: “Before the start of the monsoon every year, some species of termite swarm in the late afternoon and early evening – this behaviour is known as nuptial flight. One day I witnessed this event near a petrol pump in the town of Cooch Behar. There were thousands of termites drawn to the powerful street light, and one black drongo. This bird spent almost 20 minutes swooping through the termites, snatching and eating them as it went”
ANIRBAN DUTTA
Mature comatricha, a type of slime mould, spotted in January last year on a pile of rotting timber in Britain after two days of freezing fog. “The tallest one was only 3mm high, including the ice,” says Barry Webb, a gardener, who combined 55 focus-bracketed pictures to create the final image
BARRY WEBB
A Sahara sand viper digs itself into the sand to get itself into an ambush position next to the tracks of a dune gecko, which managed to avoid becoming a meal
PAUL LENNART SCHMID
A bundle of fishing nets in Dungeness, Kent, caught the imagination of Nigel Halliwell, a carpenter by trade
NIGEL HALLIWELL
A neurologist captures the moment when a common winter damselfly comes to a brief rest on grass spikelets in a nature reserve near the town of Fribourg, Switzerland
KAI RÝSLER
Waxcaps balancing a spider’s web and shrouded in early morning dew on the edge of a cricket pitch near Ebernoe Woods, West Sussex
JEREMY LINTOT
The wing of a damselfly in the New Forest, Hampshire, was captured in intricate detail by Nathan Benstead, 17, netting him second prize in the young photographer category. He also landed the category’s first prize with a different picture
NATHAN BENSTEAD
Dust from the Sahara highlights three greater pasque flowers just after sunrise in early spring near Vienna
HENRIK SPRANZ
The British teenager Nathan Benstead won first prize in the young photographer category with this image of slime mould fruiting bodies which he spotted on rotten logs in woodland close to his home last winter
NATHAN BENSTEAD
Water flows through an unusual rock formation in Marmorslottet, which translates as the Marble Castle, in Nordland, Norway
KLAUS AXELSEN
A bluespotted klipfish brings a zing of colour to the shells of Mediterranean mussels, an alien species in False Bay, South Africa
KATE JONKER
A ground beetle runs along a small forest road in the Italian Alps one hot July evening in an image captured by a Belgian bio-engineer
BERNARD VAN ELEGEM
A stalked jellyfish anchors itself on seaweed beneath the ice of the White Sea in Russia while it awaits prey, which it will catch by collapsing its tentacles into a fist
VIKTOR LYAGUSHKIN
A pair of miniature toads in Spain, each barely a centimetre long, find safety in the huge paw print left by a mastiff in mud next to their dried-up pond
JUAN JESUS GONZALEZ AHUMADA