But it’s the photo of a fly infected with “zombie” fungus that was crowned the overall winner in Nature Journal’s second annual competition.
The striking scene, captured by Spanish University of Valencia photographer Roberto García-Roa, shows the fruit spores of a parasitic fungus erupting from the body of a fly in Peru’s Tambopata National Reserve.
The image “depicts a conquest shaped by millennia of evolution,” García-Roa said in a press release.
“The spores of the so-called ‘zombie’ fungus have infiltrated the fly’s exoskeleton and mind, forcing it to migrate to a more favorable location for the fungus to grow,” he said. He added that the fungus’ fruiting bodies are later shed to infect other victims.
Christy Anna Hipsley, a senior editor at the magazine and one of the contest judges, compared the image to something observed in “science fiction.”
“It illustrates both life and death at the same time, as the death of the fly gives life to the fungus,” she said.
Winners and runners-up were also selected in four categories: Relationships in Nature, Research in Action, Biodiversity at Risk and Life Up Close.
Among the winning images was the image by US photographer Brandon André Güell showing gliding tree frog embryos developing in their eggs during an explosive breeding event after a rainstorm on Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula.
The competition was created to give ecologists and evolutionary biologists a chance to creatively celebrate their research to highlight the need for conservation, organizers said.