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Slime mould

Physarum pusillum (Berk et M. A Curtis)

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-2.89741, -79.0045

Field Notes

Description:

A very small (less than 1 mm high) Mycetozoa (Not really a fungi). I found it in a plant pot this morning in Cuenca, Ecuador (2500 meters). It looks like a tiny golf ball.

Habitat:

Humid high mountain forest in the Andes.

Species ID Suggestions

Comments (4)

It is not frequent to have the chance to find something that belong to "another kingdom". What we have here is a "Protista", a category Project Noah doesn't have ... yet. It belong to class Myxogastrea, an organism that have a life cycle with a small time in which it looks like an amoeba and it hunts like a bacteria ( flagellated or amoeboid swarm cells). "Physarum has been shown to exhibit intelligent characteristics similar to those seen in single-celled creatures and eusocial insects in that stage." But for an unknown reason, in certain point, it develops a sporangia (the fungi like structure that you can see in the pictures). So, basically, here we have an organism that scientists can't classify as fungi, animal or plant.
Looks like a Slim Mould rather than a true fungi. Maybe something like a Dictydium species.
By the way, it grows always over organic material like leafs and branches.

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