Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2015
Transparent care. A beam of sunlight shines down through a leaf and through the translucent skin of a tiny male reticulated glass frog clinging to its underside. He is guarding a clutch of maturing eggs, stuck to each other and to the leaf with jelly, and he will guard them for two weeks, until the tadpoles hatch and drop into the stream below. Males will wrestle other males in defence of their patches and in their attempts to attract females to their spawning leaves. They will also fend off predatory wasps intent on taking the eggs. The behaviour of glass frogs and their transparency have always fascinated Ingo and inspired his trip to Costa Rica in search of them. Transparency is the perfect camouflage, but Ingo managed to find a number of brooding males clinging to leaves beside a small stream in the Piedras Blancas National Park, some guarding several clutches, and with the aid of a ladder, he got his shots.
© Ingo Arndt/Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2014
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