Incredible close-up of spider silk wins science photo prize

These twisted threads, wrapped in thinner loop-like strands, represent the silk of the Australian web-casting spider (Subroot file), an unrivaled ambush predator. Instead of building a web and waiting for prey to fall into it, this spider holds the web in its front four legs and drops it on the unlucky insect. As this electron microscope image shows, its silk is specially adapted for this unusual hunting technique: it consists of an elastic core encased in a sheath of harder fibers of varying sizes, making it both strong and exceptionally elastic.

Photo taken Martin J. Ramirez from Argentina's Museum of Natural Sciences, Bernardino Rivadavia and colleagues is the overall winner of the 2025 Royal Society Press Photography Competition.

The winning photo in the Behavior category shows a fight between two male Great Prairie Chickens (Tympanuch cupido), removed Peter Hudson at Pennsylvania State University. As with many species of grouse, males during the breeding season gather on the so-called lek, where they compete for females by jumping into the air and trying to strike their opponent.

Filippo Carugati from the University of Turin (Italy) won in the ecology and environmental sciences category with this photograph of tadpoles taken during field research in Madagascar. Tadpoles considered young Guide book A frog swims in a gelatinous substance hanging from a tree trunk.

This image is the author Irina Petrova Adamatskaya, photographer from the UK, took second place in the behavior category. He demonstrates a masterful imitation of the Atlas butterfly (Atlas of Attacus), one of the largest moths in the world, with a wingspan of up to 30 centimeters. The tips of its wings resemble snake heads: this camouflage helps it avoid being eaten by birds.

In Chile's Atacama Desert, a valuable resource is the stratocumulus clouds that move in from the coast. Felipe Rios Silva from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and his colleagues are studying methods to capture fog and turn it into drinking water for communities living in one of the driest places on Earth. Rios Silva's photo took second place in the Earth Science and Climatology category.

The return of the Sun after six months of darkness at the South Pole is captured in this image. Aman Chokshi at McGill University in Canada, placing second in the astronomy category. Chokshi had to heat up his camera and battle icy -70°C (-94°F) winds for several minutes to capture a 360-degree panoramic shot of the horizon as the sun rose. He then turned it into a stereographic image resembling a small planet, bordered by a green-purple aurora, with the Milky Way above it.