Life up close: From larvae becoming flies to rat brains up close: The best microscopic shots and videos of 2014 revealed

From the mysteries of how life starts to the intricacies of how animals things, microscopic photography has opened up a whole new world for researchers, the Daily Mail reports.

Today, the best images of the year were honored in the 2014 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition.

First prize went to an extraordinary movie of a fruit fly developing from a trembling bars of cells.

From algae to zebrafish, life under the microscope can be beautiful, surprising and mysterious.

This week, amazing glimpses of the unseen universe earned top prizes in the 2014 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition®, the world's foremost forum for showcasing microscope images of life science subjects.

First Prize went to an extraordinary movie of a fruit fly developing, captured by a team including William Lemon, Fernando Amat and Philipp Keller of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia.

In the fascinating video, a trembling ball of cells turns into a fully developed fly larva that actually starts to crawl off screen by the movie's end.

It was selected from among nearly 2500 entries to earn $5,000 worth of Olympus equipment.

'For 11 years, Olympus has sponsored this competition to shed light on the importance of research and draw attention to the amazing intersection of science and art,' said Hidenao Tsuchiya, Chairman of Olympus Scientific Solutions Americas, part of Olympus Corporation.

'Olympus BioScapes movies and images have spurred public interest in and support of microscopy, drawn attention to the vital work that goes on in laboratories worldwide, and inspired young people to seek careers in science.'

The First Prize movie is a good example, say organizers of the contest.

High-speed videos like this allow researchers, almost for the first time, to follow the fate of individual embryonic cells from shortly after fertilization to the time the fly larva hatches; the cells divide, migrate, diversify and eventually become the varied organs and systems of the fly.

Understanding exactly how an animal develops and how different cells develop separate functions can lead to a better understanding of life processes, and ultimately may contribute to disease research.

The movie, captured using a custom-built simultaneous multi-view light sheet microscope, includes more than two million images in the complete data set; its true potential is extracted by using complex mathematical models to learn the fate of every cell.

Second Prize was a brilliant photo of a rat cerebellum, part of the brain, captured by Thomas Deerinck of the University of California San Diego's National Center for Microscopy and Imaging Research.

The image, captured using multiphoton imaging, was captured at 300x.

Other images offer additional eye-opening glimpses of life on a microscopic scale as captured by scientists, hobbyists and students.

Igor Siwanowicz, another researcher at HHMI Janelia Research Campus, earned Third Prize for his colorful confocal image of the parts of a barnacle that sweep food into the barnacle's shell for consumption.

Fourth prize was an amusing image of two weevils staged and captured by Csaba Pintér of Keszthely, Hungary. 3 4

One of the most interesting images this year was the Ninth Prize image of the gears of a green coneheaded planthopper (Acanalonia conica) nymph.

The insects are accomplished jumpers, able to accelerate at staggering 500 times the force of gravity.

To synchronize the movement of their hind legs, their trochanters are coupled with a pair of cogs.

Images such as this one help demonstrate that gears, which until recently were thought to be a human invention, exist in the natural world.

The confocal image was captured by Igor Siwanowicz, HHMI Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn,in Virginia.