Winner: Mosquito heart



Jonas King of Vanderbilt University in Tennessee won the competition with this image of a mosquito heart at 100x magnification.



The mosquito pictured, Anopheles gambiae, carries the malaria parasite Plasmodium, which affects over 500 million people worldwide, and kills over a million people annually.



King captured the image using fluorescence microscopy, which involves using chemicals that fluoresce under certain light conditions

Second: Zebrafish head



Hideo Otsuna University of Utah Medical Center, Salt Lake City, took this fluorescently-labelled image of a of a 5-day old zebrafish (Danio rerio) head, magnified 20x, using confocal microscopy, which involves focusing on only one plane of a sample.



Zebrafish are widely used in developmental biology research because they are small and cheap to maintain, lay hundreds of eggs at a time and have short generation times of only two to three months. Eggs are transparent in early developmental stages, so biologists can easily observe developing embryos.

Third: Zebrafish smelling bulbs



Oliver Braubach of Dalhousie University, Nova Scotia, Canada captured this image of the zebrafish olfactory bulbs with a confocal microscope at 250x magnification.



The olfactory bulbs in the brain are responsible for the sense of smell. Olfaction is important in zebrafish, which can use chemical signals in the water as social cues. Advertisement

Fourth: wasp nest



This image of a wasp nest, magnified 10x, was taken by Riccardo Taiariol of La Spezia, Italy using Extended Depth of Field Stereomicroscopy, which allows an image to stay in focus across a large focal length.



Unlike bees, social wasps have no wax glands. They construct nests like this one from wood pulp mixed with saliva.

Fifth: bird seed



Viktor Sykora of Charles University, Prague, in the Czech Republic captured this 10x magnified image of a seed from Strelitzia reginae, the South African ‘Bird of Paradise’ plant, using darkfield microscopy, where a sample is illuminated from behind, and then any light unaffected by the sample is removed.



The plant gets its name from the spectacular shape of the large flower, which resembles a bird’s beak and head plumage. Sunbirds pollinate the plant. They land on a large specialized leaf to drink nectar from the flower, and pollen is dusted onto the sunbird's breast and feet. The bird then carries this pollen to the next flower it visits.

Sixth: seaweed



This image of living red seaweed of the genus Martensia, magnified 40X, was taken by John Huisman of Murdoch University, Western Australia, using a brightfield microscope, where the sample is illuminated with white light from behind.

Seventh: cell microfibres



Endothelial cells. The various parts of the cell are coloured differently. For example, the cell nuclei are blue. Magnification: 2500x. Confocal fluorescence microscopy. Yongli Shan at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas.

Eighth: mineral crystal



The mineral Cacoxenite. Magnification: 18x. Reflected light. Honorio Cocera-La Parra of the Geology Museum at the University of Valencia, Spain.

Ninth: dog fleas



Fleas have been popular subjects for microscopy ever since Robert Hooke published his beautiful illustrations of them in his “Micrographia” in 1665.



Duane Harland at AgResearch Ltd in Lincoln, New Zealand captured this image of the dog flea Ctenocephalides canis magnified 20x using fluorescence microscopy.

10th : soy sauce



Crystallized soy sauce. Magnification: 16x. Reflected and transmitted light. Yanping Wang, Beijing Language and Culture University, Beijing, China.

11th: cancer cells



Dividing cancer cells. Magnification: 100x. Deconvolution microscopy. Paul Andrews, University of Dundee, Scotland, UK.

12th: bivalve mollusc



Juvenile bivalve mollusc, Lima sp. Magnification: 10x. Darkfield microscopy. Gregory Rouse, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, California.

13th: mushroom coral



Live specimen of the orange mushroom coral Fungia sp. Magnification: 166x. Fluorescence microscopy. James Nicholson, Coral Culture and Collaborative Research Facility, Charleston, South Carolina.

14th: bananas



Spiral vessels from a banana plant stem. Magnification: 32x. Polarised light. Stephen Lowry, University of Ulster, UK.

15th: lichen acid



Recrystallized acid from Evernia divaricata - a lichen. Magnification: 10x. Polarised light. Ralf Wagner, Düsseldorf, Germany.

16th: flower stigma



The pollen-stained stigma of the four o’clock flower Mirabilis jalapa, which only opens in the afternoon. Magnification: 100x. Epifluorescence and 3D reconstruction. Robert Markus, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Szeged, Hungary

17th: wasp eye



Wasp compound eye and antenna base. Magnification: 40x Reflected light. Charles Krebs, Washington, US

18th: soap



Soap film. Magnification: 150x. Incident light, brightfield microscopy. Gerd Guenther, Düsseldorf, Germany.

19th: rat retina



The retinal blood vessel network of the wistar rat. Magnification: 100X. Confocal microscopy. Cameron Johnson, University of Auckland, New Zealand