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David Liittschwager

Jellyfish tentacles (pictured, a lion's mane jellyfish) carry thousands of stinging cells called cnidocytes.

A sample collected off Hawaii contains living organisms and plastic.

For a story in the February 2010 issue called "Life in a Cubic Foot," photographer David Liittschwager and his team set a 12-inch metal frame in multiple environments in order to document all of the life forms within it. This photo illustrates life in a cubic foot at Table Mountain, South Africa.

A backlit sheet collects night-flying insects at a field station in Ecuador.

A light-flooded sheet in Arizona’s Chiricahua Mountains is dominated by large white-lined sphinx moths and green stink bugs. Ecologist Lee Dyer, who sets light traps to monitor insect populations, says that in years past, this trap captured many more and rarer insects. (From “Where have all the insects gone?,” May 2020.)

A sample collected off Hawaii contains plastic particles.

The extinction of the one-inch-wide Xerces blue butterfly, last seen in the dunes around San Francisco nearly 80 years ago, may have been a harbinger of what scientists fear could become a global insect die-off. This specimen was collected in Lake Merced, California, on March 30, 1909, and was photographed at the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco.

Being a mother always involves sacrifices, but few other animals can match some species of octopus that die so that offspring have a chance to live. After laying her eggs, which may number in the thousands, an octopus settles down on the seafloor to guard them zealously, like this mother of an undescribed species. She protects them from predators and fans them with fresh, oxygen-rich water. Devoted completely to their care, she eschews even eating, wasting away as the weeks and months pile up. In California's Monterey Bay scientists using submersibles observed one female deep-sea octopus (Graneledone boreopacifica), carry on this devotion for more than four years—the longest known brooding period for any animal.

Fireflies flash and streak through a summer night in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The aim of the spectacular light show is to seduce prospective mates.

The algae octopus's resting camouflage makes it look like a shell covered in green algae.