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Nikon has announced the winners of this year’s International Small World Competition — the 36-year-old contest that pits the world’s research laboratories against each other to crown the rulers of microscopy — and the results are stunning. Jonas King, a graduate student in the Vanderbilt University lab of biologist Julián Hillyer, took home the prize ($3,000 towards Nikon products) for his fluorescent image of a mosquito’s heart. Hillyer’s lab specializes in studying basic aspects of mosquito immunology and physiology.

Hideo Otsuna of the Chi-Bin Chien zebrafish development lab at the University of Utah Medical Center won second prize for his shot of a zebrafish head.

And sticking with zebrafish, 3rd prize went to Oliver Braubach, a PhD student at Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, Canada, for a great image of the model organism’s olfactory bulbs.

Check out all the winners, the honorable mentions, and the images of distinction here.

[Warning: Be prepared to blissfully burn through several minutes/hours perusing the beautiful images on this page.]

–Bob Grant, Associate Editor, The Scientist