Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

[Bruce Williams]

Hi folks,

If I'd have seen this slimey, white mass before joining this forum, I'd have thought "YUK" and quickly moved on. Today I think, "Let's take a closer look....mmmm in-ter-esting...(with not even the hint of a yuk)".

Now, I've no doubt there are folks out there who would look at it and say "Wow - that's beautiful ". Well to be honest, I'm not quite there yet but who knows, this time next year....

All attempts to identify have met with failure - so any help much appreciated.

Bruce

[Ken Ramos]

Well Bruce, I would not say YUK nor would I say that it is beautiful in a photographic sense but it is quite interesting. Fungi take on diverse forms and so do plasmodia and myxomycetes. What you could have here is a plasmodia in the process of fruitification, notice I said "could." Things like this are fun to bring home and scare people to death with, especially when they get out of their petri dishes and go slithering across ones desk or you wake up one morning to find it comfortably resting on yours or the missus forehead.

[beetleman]

Be careful, Ken will want to Marry that slimemold (Mr fungus Man) No shot is too slimy for this forum. Great picture Bruce

[Ken Ramos]

Doug said:

Be careful, Ken will want to Marry that slimemold

Two of the scariest words in the whole world is "I Do." "Been there. Done that," and I got divorce papers to prove it.

[cactuspic]

My fisrst inclintion is still to say "yuch." Only now I look again and follow it with a "that's a cool photo." Good job. To get the unadulterated "yuch," I guess now I will have to surprise my wife Robin with the promise of neat photo

No having a scientific backround, I had to google plasmodia and slime mould. You will be glad to know I found this:

"More recently slimes were included in the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual and so are now a staple in many fantasy role-playing games and computer games. In the popular RPG NetHack, "slime mold" is the default name of a sought-after and delicious food item. Whether or not most actual slime moulds are delicious, or even edible, is unclear, and some may be poisonous. However, mycologist Tom Volk reports that the plasmodium of Fuligo is eaten in Mexico."

YUCH! Even though I now enjoy slime mould as a picture, I bet even Nikola does not have a recipe that would allow me to enjoy slime mould as a food.

Irwin

Irwin

[Ken Ramos]

Irwin said:

I bet even Nikola does not have a recipe that would allow me to enjoy slime mould as a food .

Don't count on it!

I don't know a lot about mathmatics, especially biomathmatics, however, I read a while back that the biomathmatics involved in myxomycetes are in part responsible for the applications used in video games.

[MacroLuv]

Because you were begging for this...

MISSISSIPPI SLIME

1 c. flour
1/2 c. walnuts, chopped
1 stick butter
1 c. powdered sugar
1 (8 oz.) "Philly" cream cheese
1 (12 oz.) Cool Whip
2 (3 1/4 oz.) pkgs. pistachio pudding (instant)
3 c. milk

Microwave butter in a 9 x 13 inch baking dish. Mix in nuts and flour. Pat into bottom of dish with fork. Micro on "Hi" 4 minutes and turn dish halfway and micro 4 minutes more. Let cool. In a mixing bowl, mix powdered sugar, cream cheese and 1/2 Cool Whip. Spread over cooled crust. Mix pudding with milk in mixer and spread over cream mixture in baking dish. Top with remaining Cool Whip and sprinkle more chopped walnuts on top if desired.

Chocolate Slime

8 2-ounce bars of baking white chocolate
2 tablespoons heavy cream
6 to 12 drops green food coloring
Angel food cake, cut in large cubes
Red and green grapes, rinsed and removed from stem
2 to 3 bananas, sliced into 1-inch rounds
2 to 3 red or green apples, rinsed, cored and sliced
2 oranges, peeled and divided into sections
1 to 2 pineapples, cut into large chunks

In a medium-sized, microwave-safe bowl, melt the chocolate uncovered in a microwave set on medium-high for 1 minute. Stir and microwave for additional 10- to 20-second intervals until smooth.

Don't overcook. (For an alternative method, use a glass or nonreactive double boiler set on medium-low heat. Stir regularly until the chocolate is smooth.) Add the cream and food coloring and stir thoroughly.

Keep warm in a double boiler or fondue pot and present with cut cake and fresh fruits.

Vampire Slime

1/2 cup of cornflour
Red food colouring
1 1/2 cups of water
A frying pan
Measuring cups
A stirring spoon

Mix all the ingredients in a frying pan.
Heat the mixture slowly, stirring continuously.
Once the mixture is thick, stop stirring. Allow it to cool.
Handle at “blood” temperature

[svalley]

Bruce, good shot. Maybe not beautiful, but certainly scientifically interesting, and the your exposure has good detail in the highlights and shadows.

We got a sample of Slime Mold spores in our lab to ID, whitish powder with black specks. I gave it to my daughter to try and rear/cultivate?? in a terrarium. My grandson is 5 and interested in everything right now. Does anyone have suggestions on the best ways to do this successfully? Do these things actually creep around like a big ameoba?

[Ken Ramos]

Cultivating slime moulds in the lab is challenging enough on culture media, which is best. However that is not to say that you cannot cultivate them at home either. It is just a lot harder to do so. There are a few important things to consider when trying to grow these things: Light, Temperature, Humidity and pH from what I have read. There has to be a balance between the four. Light, Temperature and Humidity are the most important. Keep the light to a minimal preferably that equal to forest shade. The temperature around that of room temperature 75°F. The substrate preferably decaying wood or maybe decaying leaves, should be damp but have some free standing water, since when the spores germinate they will become amoebo-flagellates and be very motile. It will take sometime for them to aggregate and to form a plasmodium, so be patient. I am not saying that this will work. There are many ways to grow Myxomycetes. Banana peels are another good culture medium. Place the peels in a pan, add spores, cover with plastic wrap, place in an area where there is minimal light at room temperature. Inspect them from time to time. Average wait, about a month for a plasmodium to form. Chances of this working are hit and miss also.

As for being a giant amoeba, you bet! The plasmodium will move about at about 1" per hour, I have had other sources say different +/- that rate. I would go with the 1" per hour because I once kept one as a pet for a few weeks, however, it died and did not come to fruitification. They can get quite large. I caputred mine from an old decaying log, where the plasmodium was hidding under the bark. I brought it home in a petri dish, it was about 30mm in size. They move around just like an amoeba (amoeboid movement) by means of pseudopodia and feed by phagocytosis. They are a single cell and multinucleate. Most average in size to about what mine did but they can grow to several feet or more, covering an entire yard or lawn but those are select species. If the plasmodium is observed using a microscope with a low power objective or a stereo microscope, one can see the protoplasmic flow of materials within the viens of the plasmodium.

[cactuspic]

lol: I cackled out loud when I saw your recipes Nikola

Ken, love all the info and am eating up all the new knowledge....uhh...perhaps I should have used a different word than eating.

[svalley]

Thanks Ken! I will pass this on to my daughter.

[Ken Ramos]

Irwin/Steve, you're both quite welcome. I should have noted however, that one will not always see a plasmodium. They are very secretative and can bury themselves in very unusual places and then again some are not very colorful, as a matter of fact one particular species is clear and others microscopic. Most however and fortunately are macroscopic and can be easily found with diligence. But getting back to the plasmodium, you may or may not see it in some cases. You may wake up one day to inspect a culture that has been going for sometime and find a very beautiful mass of fruiting bodies. Well where was the plasmodium you may ask? They are very good at hidding. I might also add that fungi/mould is a deadly enemy to myxomycetes. If a culture begins to mould, you may as well throw it out. For an organism so small and relatively unknown by most laymen, it sure is a complicated little thing.

[beetleman]

Ken, you should give them a link to your amoebic plasmodium pictures you posted a while ago..........

[Ken Ramos]

Doug said:

Ken, you should give them a link to your amoebic plasmodium pictures you posted a while ago..........

I will do one better. These images are about three times the size of what you will be looking for, either in the lab, home, or in the wild, hidding under a layer of bark or underneath the fallen and decaying leaves of the forest floor. They can be much larger and for the vast majority of plasmodia they are not microscopic in nature.



The first image in this stitch is what you find in the wild. This is the plasmodium that I brough home and kept for a few weeks, my "pet" as I referred to it. The second is the same plasmodium after having "crawled or slithered" off of the decaying wood substrate and on to the bottom of the plastic petri dish.

Notice the extentions of the pseudopodia towards the posterior as they form an open mesh network, whereas those at the anterior are advancing in classic amoeboid form. Like microscopic amebae, the plasmodium encircles its prey forming a digestive chamber in which enzymes are released to break down the food. However, unlike the amebae one sees through the light microscope, the plasmodium shows no signs of a food vacuole having been formed, even though it is a single cell like or similar to its microscopic relative. Though this one measured about 30mm in size, its size did, however, fluctuate more or somtimes less.

[Bruce Williams]

Thanks for your comments guys and for your recipes Nikola.

Very interesting material Ken that will have me scrabbling under logs and suchlike with my petri dish at the ready .

Bruce