Collin Williams (front) and Sarah Putnam of Nevada, protesters affiliated with the Occupy Las Vegas movement, participate in a “zombie walk” on the Las Vegas Strip October 30, 2011 in Las Vegas, Nevada. The demonstrators are protesting what they believe is greed and corruption among banking and business leaders in solidarity with other Occupy movements around the world. (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

“Microscope images forge an extraordinary bond between science and art, said Hidenao Tsuchiya, Olympus America's Vice President and General Manager for the Scientific Equipment Group. We founded this competition to focus on the fascinating stories coming out of today's life science research laboratories. The thousands of images that people have shared with the competition over the years reflect some of the most exciting work going on in research today – work that can help shed light on the living universe and ultimately save lives. We look at BioScapes and these beautiful images as sources of education and inspiration to us and the world”. – OlympusBioScapes

Photo: Pretarsus of the third leg of a female drone fly (Eristalis tenax), ventral view, by Dr. Jan Michels, Institute of Zoology, Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel, Germany. (Photo by Olympus BioScapes)

These images have been created using a colour scanning electron microscope (SEM) by the award-winning Eye of Science, comprised of snapper Oliver Meckes and biologist Nicole Ottawa. For a decade the pair, based in Reutlingen in the south of Germany, worked with an old SEM they saved from the scrapheap, but for the last five years they have used a £250,000 FEI Quanta Series Field Emission SEM. Oliver said: “Flowers are beautiful in 'normal' view, but when you look closer, some parts get very bizarre and unexpected structures appear – flowers within flowers, worlds within worlds”. Photo: The floret of a Chamomile flower up close and personal. (Photo by Oliver Meckes/Barcroft Media)

In this June 8, 2015 photo, Omkarnath, who goes by the name “Medicine Baba”, pays his reverence at a neighborhood temple as he begins his day in New Delhi, India. The chatty, 79-year-old retired blood-bank technician has been collecting unused prescription drugs from the affluent for the past eight years, and distributing whatever hasn't expired to patients who need medicines they cannot afford. (Photo by Saurabh Das/AP Photo)

Tourists and journalists stand next to a newly displayed statue of pharaoh Amenhotep III and his wife Tiye (Down) in Egypt's temple city of Luxor on March 23, 2014. Two colossal statues of pharaoh Amenhotep III were unveiled by archaeologists today in their original sites in the funerary temple of the king, on the west bank of the Nile in Luxor, adding to the existing two famous ancient Memnon colossi. (Photo by Khaled Desouki/AFP Photo)

Pedestrians and workers pass an upside down car art installation in a car park on the South Bank in London, February 19, 2015. British artist Alex Chinneck's illusory piece, entitled “Pick yourself up and pull yourself together”, and on display in the working car park for a week, sees a Vauxhall car suspended upside down, appearing to be gripping onto a peeled back length of tarmac. (Photo by Toby Melville/Reuters)

A dog swims as a resident navigates his boat in a neighbourhood flooded by the Purus river, which continues to rise from days of heavy rainfall in the region, in Boca do Acre, Amazonas state March 14, 2015. According the state civil defense, more than 20,000 people have been left homeless along the Purus river, where incessant rains have flooded the area and caused the river to burst their banks. (Photo by Bruno Kelly/Reuters)

A 14 year-old Myanmar girl carries three bags of powdered-limestone to load in to a boat on the bank of Ayeyarwaddy River, on International Women's Day in Mandalay, Myanmar, Tuesday, March 8, 2016. Migrant workers living along Ayeyarwaddy riverbank earn bout 5000 Kyats (US Dollar 4) a day for loading and unloading goods. (Photro by Hkun Lat/AP Photo)