There are now less than 2 weeks left to submit your entries to the BMC Ecology Image Competition!

More than 100 images have now been submitted from all over the world, so be sure to send in yours before Saturday 1^st December to be in with a chance of winning.

The competition is open to everyone affiliated with a research institution, and we consider all images from photos to data visualizations. Entries should be submitted to one of five categories that reflect the editorial sections of the journal. The winner of each category will be chosen by each of the journal’s Section Editors and the categories are:

Behavioural and physiological ecology

Conservation ecology and biodiversity research

Community, population, and macroecology

Landscape ecology and ecosystems

Theoretical ecology and models

If you’re not sure which category your image fits into – don’t worry, we can help you out!

To submit your images, please send them in to the journal’s Executive Editor. Please note that we can only consider images that will be released under a Creative Commons license, for re-use with attribution.

In addition to the individual winners from each section, BMC Ecology is delighted to announce that the overall winner of the competition will be selected by our guest judge, Dr Yan Wong, from the BBC science programme “Bang Goes the Theory”. Yan has a background in ecology and evolutionary biology, and has previously worked with Richard Dawkins on The Ancestor’s Tale while at the University of Oxford. In consultation with Yan, we will also be making a donation to the Wytham Woods conservation project  to help the continued running of one of the world’s most-studied ecological field systems.

We’ve already had some fantastic images submitted, a selection of which can be viewed on our Flickr page “Imaging Ecology”.

Many of the entrants have already taken up the opportunity to have their images considered in the peer-reviewed Biology Image Library, an online collection of images, movies, illustrations and animations across biology and biomedicine. For example, Raf Aerts from University of Leuven (Belgium) submitted this image of a fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) in the Meerdaal forest, Belgium. This image demonstrates beautifully how imaging can also be used as a tool in ecological analysis- with repeat photography being used to “fingerprint” individuals during population surveys. Full details of the behaviour of these elusive amphibians, together with the image metadata can be viewed in the image library.

Further details on how to submit your images can be found in our previous blog post, which also includes full details of the prizes for the winning images.

Good luck, and we look forward to receiving your entries!