Vincent van Gogh 'Irises'; © Kristine Paulus CC

We are very happy to announce that the BMC Ecology Image Competition 2015 has now begun!  Please share with us your most striking images of how you study the natural world. Our previous competition was highly successful, and we look forward to another year of outstanding entries.

Anyone who is affiliated with a research institution can enter.  We ask that entries be submitted to one of the five categories listed below and that they depict a specific ecological interaction.

We will consider all images from photos to data visualizations, or a mixture of both – as long as they are striking, meaningful, and creative. The winner of each category will be chosen by each of the journal’s academic Section Editors. The categories are:

• Behavioral and physiological ecology

• Conservation ecology and biodiversity research

• Community, population, and macroecology

• Landscape ecology and ecosystems

• Theoretical ecology and models

This year, an overall winner will be selected by our guest judge, Dr. Ana Porzecanski, Director of the Center for Biodiversity & Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History.

The winner will receive a cash prize of £250 (€300/$400) and their image will be used as the journal’s main promotional image – featuring prominently on the journal’s website and in its printed and online marketing material. The runner-up will receive £100 (€125/$150), and additional prizes of £50 (€65/$75) will be awarded for those images selected by the Section Editors that best represent their section.

Instructions for entry:

Please email your images to BMC Ecology at bmcecol@biomedcentral.com with the subject line “BMC Ecology Image Competition 2015”.

The following information must be included:

Name:
Section:
Image
Description (Max. 300 words):
File type:
Data attribution (if applicable):
Affiliation:
Contact details of Research Institute:
I agree to release this image under a Creative Commons License:  Y/N
Twitter handle (optional):

Please attach your image entry to your email. All images must conform to the following criteria:

• A minimum 300dpi (1831 x 1831 pixels for a raster image).
• In one of the allowable formats – EPS, PDF (for line drawings), PNG, TIFF,  JPEG, BMP, DOC, PPT [Please note that it is the responsibility of the author(s) to obtain permission from the copyright holder to reproduce figures or tables that have previously been published elsewhere.]

In line with our policies on open access, entry to the competition implies release of the images under a creative commons license, to allow file sharing with proper attribution. We’d love to be able to share your images with everyone throughout the competition, so entrants are also free to upload their entries onto our dedicated Flickr page “Imaging Ecology”, where you can view other images and post your comments.

We’ll be posting regular updates on the competition throughout the coming months, so don’t forget to keep up to date by reading our blog or by following us on Twitter @BMC_series

Closing date for entries is 29th May 2015 and winners will be announced shortly afterwards.

Good luck!