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Marek Miś

This kaleidoscopic image by Polish photographer Marek Miś depicts a pregnant Daphnia magna, a small aquatic crustacean.

The interior of a leaf is filled with a spongy tissue called mesophyll, seen here, that's chock-full of chloroplasts. This tissue is where the magic of plants happens, reacting with CO2, sunlight, and water to get sugars and oxygen gas.

Illuminated with polarised light, these spinach tissues reveal their internal plumbing.

In cross section, the internal structure of an annual mallow ('Lavatera trimestris') is laid bare.

More than 215 plant families make crystals of calcium oxalate. Some crystals, such as this one in a spinach leaf ('Spinacia oleracea'), take the form of thorny balls called druses, which help defend the plant by irritating would-be herbivores.

Spiky and sleekly two-lobed, the algae species 'Xanthidium antilopaeum' wouldn't look out of place as a bauble in a Frank Lloyd Wright home. Scientists first described the species in 1849.

Life's a party in a periphyton, an aggregate of bacteria, algae, and other tiny creatures that builds up on aquatic sediments. Its denizens can include single-celled creatures called heliozoans (left) and photosynthetic diatoms (right).

Glinting in polarised light, a single-celled 'Netrium alga' gleams near the leaf of a sphagnum moss.

Many cells of 'Micrasterias truncata', a single-celled green algae, drift near some sphagnum moss leaves. First scientifically described in 1848, this freshwater species is named for its nearly split-in-half appearance.

Fungi infiltrate a pine ('Pinus') needle, seen here from the side. Just like animals, plants can fall victim to infections. Ongoing climate change is expected to alter the impacts of these diseases, as plants grapple with warmer temperatures and either more or less water than they're used to.