2018 winners, clockwise from top left: Overall winner (Marianne Elias), 1st runner up (Pilar Oliva Vidal), 2nd runner up (Matteo Santon)

Send us your most beautiful images of the natural world

The BMC Ecology Image Competition is your opportunity to celebrate your research and show off your photographic talent.

The winning images from previous years have attracted substantial attention not just from ecologists but also from the wider public, featuring in international media outlets such as the Guardian, IFL Science, Scientific American, and the BBC.

Anyone affiliated with a research institution is eligible to enter. Entries should depict a specific ecological interaction, and we ask that you submit to one of these five categories:

• • Behavioral and physiological ecology
  • Conservation ecology and biodiversity research
  • Community, population, and macroecology
  • Landscape ecology and ecosystems
  • Theoretical ecology and models

Judging and Prizes

Judging the competition will be the BMC Ecology Section Editors, picking the best image for each of the five categories listed above.

The overall winner will receive a cash prize of €300, while the runner-up will receive €150.  Additional prizes of €75 will be awarded for those images selected by the Section Editors that best represent their section.

How to submit              

Please email your images to bmcecol@biomedcentral.com with the subject line “BMC Ecology Image Competition” and include the following :

1. 1. Name:
   2. Category:
   3. Image:
   4. Description (Max. 300 words):
   5. File type:
   6. Data attribution (if applicable):
   7. Affiliation:
   8. Contact details of Research Institute:
   9. I agree to release this image under a Creative Commons License:  Y/N
   10. 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.

Submit your images now!

We’ll be posting regular updates on the competition in 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 February 2020, with winners being announced in March 2020.

Good luck!