Table of Contents

cover image

Volume 24, Number 5
09 March 2005

pp 875-1094

Crinoids - also called Feather Stars, appear as a dense mass of arms hidden in the smallest crevices, holes or other hiding places of tropical reefs during daytime. The picture was captured at Ellaidhoo, a small Maldive island of the Ari atoll (Indo-Pacific Ocean) with a Nikonos RS/50mm macro lens on Kodak Elitechrome 100 ASA colour slide film. The photographer, Wolfgang Seifarth, is a molecular biologist at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, where he studies the importance of endogenous retroviral elements (HERV) in the human genome. Wolfgang Seifarth also has a strong interest in marine biology field research and taxonomy, and underwater photography. His image of the crinoids was selected as the winner of the EMBO Journal Cover Contest 2005.

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