Incredible close-up of spider silk wins scientific photo award

These twisted threads wrapped in finer, looped strands are the silk of an Australian net-casting spider (Subrufa file), a consummate ambush predator. Instead of building a web and waiting for its prey to fall into it, this spider holds its net between its four front legs and throws it at an unfortunate insect. As this electron microscope image shows, its silk is specially adapted for this unusual hunting technique: it consists of an elastic core wrapped in a sheath of harder fibers of varying sizes, making it both strong and exceptionally stretchy.

The photo, taken by Martin J. Ramirez at the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences Bernardino Rivadavia and colleagues, is the overall winner of the Royal Society Publishing Photography Competition 2025.

The winning photo in the behavior category shows a fight between two male prairie chickens (Tympanuchus cupido), photographed by Peter Hudson of Pennsylvania State University. Like many grouse species, males congregate in a so-called lek during the breeding season, where they compete for mates by leaping into the air and attempting to strike their opponent.

Filippo Carugati, from the University of Turin, Italy, won in the ecology and environmental sciences category with this photo of tadpoles, taken during fieldwork in Madagascar. Tadpoles, thought to be the young of a The guide book frog, swim in a gelatinous substance suspended from a tree trunk.

This image by Irina Petrova Adamatzky, a photographer based in the United Kingdom, is second in the behavior category. It highlights the masterful mimicry of the Atlas butterfly (Attacus Atlas), one of the largest moths in the world, with a wingspan of up to 30 centimeters. The tips of its wings resemble snake heads: a disguise that allows it to avoid being eaten by birds.

In the Chilean Atacama Desert, stratocumulus clouds coming from the coast constitute a precious resource. Felipe Ríos Silva of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and colleagues are exploring techniques to capture fog and turn it into drinking water for communities living in one of the driest places on Earth. Ríos Silva’s photo was a finalist in the earth sciences and climatology category.

The return of the sun after six months of darkness at the South Pole is captured in this image by Aman Chokshi of McGill University in Canada, a finalist in the astronomy category. Chokshi had to warm up his camera and brave the freezing wind at -70°C (-94°F) for several minutes to take a 360-degree panoramic photo of the horizon as the sun rose. He then transformed it into a stereographic image resembling a small planet, rimmed by a green and purple aurora with the Milky Way above.