Slime molds ooze among us
By adamg on Thu, 11/02/2006 - 8:26pm
The Urban Pantheist appreciates and photographs Stemonitis axifera in Olmsted Park:
... These animal-like organisms are similar (to concieve in our minds) to colonial amobae, swarming masses of plasma, thousands of cells without membranes grouped together in a gooey mobile soup. This plasma stage crawls and eats, usually sweeping across wet dead wood, capturing and consuming mircroorganisms. When their microhabitat dries up, the plasma collects itself into fungus-like fruiting bodies that package up spores to be carried away on the air in order to grow a new slime mold in greener pastures, as it were. ...
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