Last evening, my wife asked me to look at something in the flower bed; it appeared to her that an animal had vomited on the bark mulch. With that description, I knew she had discovered a slime mold.
Despite their ugly appearance, slime molds are fascinating organisms that demonstrate features typical of both plants and animals. Once classified as Myxomycota, within the Kingdom of Fungi, slime molds are now placed in their own Kingdom (Protista) by many mycologists; beyond the confusion regarding their classification, slime molds are a heterogeneous group, generally divided into cellular and plasmodial forms. Beginning life as a spore, this mystery organism initially becomes either an ameoboid cell or a flagellated swarm cell; the former group fuse into plasmodial species while the latter stick together to form cellular mats. The plasmodial forms may be a few centimeters to several feet in diameter; in either case, the individual cell walls break down and the parent slime mold looks like a giant amoeba with thousands of nuclei.
Slime molds germinate in cool, moist areas where decaying vegetation harbors a large supply of microorganisms (bacteria) on which it feeds. Spreading across its feeding ground, the slime mold grows until the ground begins to dry out or its food supply is exhausted; it then morphs into a fungal-like organism with variable spore bearing structures (surface puff balls in some species, feathery stalks in others). Once the spores are released, they lodge in the soil and "wait" for favorable conditions to redevelop.
Caught between animal and plant kingdoms, slime molds occupy a unique niche on this planet; unable to group them with other life forms, I'll have to give them their own blog label. That will be easy enough for me but I'm concerned for the creationists: on what day did God create slime molds?
