Researchers doing behavioral experiments with honeybees sometimes use paint or enamel to give individual bees distinguishing marks. The elaborate social structure and impressive learning and navigation abilities of bees make them good models for behavioral and neurobiological research.

Image courtesy of Claudia Lutz and Charley Nye, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Axolotls are a type of salamander often studied for their extensive regenerative abilities. They can regrow tails, limbs, spinal cords, brains and more. This axolotl has been genetically modified so that its developing nervous system glows purple and its Schwann cell nuclei appear light blue to help illuminate the role of the peripheral nervous system during limb regeneration.

Image courtesy of Marko Pende, Hannover Medical School.

Actin is an essential protein in a cell’s skeletal structure, forming a sense network of thin supporting filaments. In this image, using a technique called stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy, dyed actin strands crisscross a cell.

Image courtesy of Xiaowei Zhuang, HHMI, Harvard University, and Nature Publishing Group.

The colorful intricacies of a mouse kidney are depicted in this quantum dot fluorescence image (240X magnification)

Thomas Deerinck, National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research, UC San Diego.

A peek inside the developing brain of a live zebrafish using a confocal microscope and labeling of the brain’s endothelial cells with fluorescent proteins. What’s depicted is the construction of the blood-brain barrier.

Image courtesy of Jennifer Peters and Michael Taylor at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Nikon Small World.

A scanning electron micrograph of a tardigrade, more colloquially known as water bears or moss piglets. These incredibly hardy micro-animals (1,300 known species) are found throughout the Earth’s biospheres, from mountaintops and rainforests to Antarctica and the deep sea. They have even survived exposure to outer space.

Image courtesy of Eye of Science/Science Photo Library.

A confocal micrograph of an adult transgenic zebrafish head showing blood vessels (blue), lymphatic vessels (yellow) and the skin and scales (magenta).

Image courtesy of Daniel Castranova and Brant M. Weinstein, NIH.

In this distinctive mind map, created by Sahah Ahmad, Ye Wu and Pew-Thian Yap at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, the brain’s substructures (hippocampus in orange, amygdala in pink, putamen in magenta, caudate nucleus in purple and nucleus accumbens in green) are shown bound together by colorful, yarn-like fibers.

The head of a rodent optic nerve is depicted in this confocal, fluorescent image (magnified 20X), showing astrocytes in yellow, contractile proteins in red and retinal vasculature in green.

Image courtesy of Hassanain Qambari and Jayden Dickson, Lions Eye Institute, Australia.

In this confocal micrograph, the cochlea—a spiral-shaped structure of the inner ear—is shown, lined with hair cells. The latter employ fine hairs to detect movement caused by incoming sound waves, transmitting that information to the brain.

Image courtesy of Sonja Pyott, University of North Carolina.