Winners of WSC21: Wildlife and Nature

The following post list the winners of WSC 2021.

The winning submission of Wildlife and Nature category shows us California red-sided garter snake in its aquatic habitat in Northern California, USA. It was made by Jaden Clark.

Comment from the jury:

A good wildlife scientific image is not necessarily spectacular, but it is always informative. In this snapshot we can spot almost all relevant information necessary to characterize the species Thamnophis sirtalis infernalis (posture. belly, eye shape, color pattern). Only the shape of the head from above is not visible, but no other information is lost because of improper framing.

Some wildlife photos focus solely on the animal, but in this case the aquatic ecosystem is also visibile, all in the same image, with a balanced composition.It is therefore more complete when compared to the previous one (at lower resolution) that we had stored here on Commons.

Runners-up:

Fern sorus of Polypodium aureum. Luminescence at 365 nm excitation spectrum. Anatoly Mikhaltsov from Russia.
Drone view of hexagonal basalt columns in Stuðlagil canyon in Iceland. Maxim Bilovitskiy from Estonia.
A snowflake dangling on a spider web. Adrian Tync from Poland.
Water droplets on insect wings. Filetnagdelaney from USA.
Gecko’s foot from underneath. PanWoyteczek from Poland.
Sand balls made by sand bubbler crab on the beach of Koh Yao Noi island. Vyacheslav Argenberg from Thailand.

Files were published under CC BY 4.0 license.