Slime Moulds! Secret World of Nature
On this year's monsoon on 2020, I found two different types of slime moulds growing on our rooftop garden over a pile of old branches of dead plants (on the month of July, in Natore, Bangladesh). On first appearance they didn't look anything like slime moulds, rather they looked like some dust laying over the woods.
Moulds! Almost every one of us has heard the word moulds! The most probable way to hear the word for people around me is while reading the basic facts about cleanliness of our households and surroundings. Basically, we learned about moulds is that if our house stays stagnant and frowzy moulds would grow and they posses a great risk of respiratory illness. They are such tiny that sometimes not even possible to locate with naked eyes.
Facts that we have learned about moulds are completely accurate and they do posses immense risk of health issues. So watch out and beware of them. Don't let your house get molded over!
There is also another term "slime moulds". How many of us are aware of this terminology? I'm not certain enough but to my experience the number won't be large enough to compare with the "mould" introduced people.
Today's writing is about slime moulds. Moulds are included in the mysterious kingdom of fungi and slime moulds too were included before. The reason of using 'were' on the last sentence is because they don't belong to Fungi kingdom anymore. Over the past few years kingdom fungi has gone through a lot of changes and on the process of reshaping, slime moulds have been exiled from there. They have both animal and plant like features. It has been proven that fungi and slime molds (fungi like protists) are completely different except those similarities in their life-cycle pattern and strange funny fruiting bodies. They grow over decaying matter like dead animal, dead plant matter, patch of decaying mulch, pile of organic garbage and everywhere.
The name itself contains the word "slime" but not all slime moulds are slimy. They have so many varieties that some species don't even have enough to match any similarities among them.
Monsoon is an optimum weather to find slime moulds around you because wherever you look, you can always find something is being degrading. And that has the best potential for slime moulds to grow.
That's too much gibberish of mine, you might have gotten bored already! So, let's look over my findings of slime moulds on this monsoon. Hope you get a little excited with me on these fantastic slime mould's journey.
Stemonitis and Arcyria, slime moulds that I found on my terrace. Surfing on internet to learn about different varieties of plants and fungi is a favourite pastime of mine. So, often I find such fungi and slime moulds on internet that I could never imagine of finding on my surroundings and it was completely a bolt from the blue to find them here at my house.
Slime moulds that I found (Stemonitis and Arcyria) belong to the type of plasmodium slime moulds (there are two other types too). They live in single cellular form for their entire life but when resource scarcity occurs, many individuals fuse together forming cluster and fruit bodies. And the fusion happens with the help of chemical secretion, like a secret communication system! Truly fascinating they are!
Stemonitis sp.
Tree hair! Have you ever been lucky enough to spot hair on trees? Or, like very tiny tubes dipped in chocolate growing over trees? There's a high possibility that you might have. "Believe it or not!" with this very title stemonitis slime moulds were first recongnized worldwide at Ripley’s Believe it or Not pavilion in World’s Fair in Chicago, 1993 and first described by a German botanist, Johann Gottileb Gleditsch in 1753.
You might have seen tiny clusters of filamentous like fruit bodies forming over dead wood. They're are slime moulds under "stemonitis" genus, commonly known as tree hair, chocolate tube etc. Not necessarily they're dark, they can be found in light colors too. Their distribution is spreaded over the entire world and they're pretty common too, except antarctica of course! So they're found pretty easily oozing around earth if you notice thoroughly.
Classification of Stemonitis
Division: Myxomicota
Class: Myxogastria
Order: Stemonitida
Family: Stemonitidaceae
Genus: Stemonitis
True slime molds. Cluster of stemonitis that I had found were 4-5 mm (average size, can be large upto 2cm as well). According to some scientists, they've been lumbering about through four geological periods.
Cluster of black filaments holding tubular structure filled with sporangia is the formation of stemonitis. Belonging to plasmodial slime moulds they live in single cells for major period of their lifespan and produces these strange hairy fruit bodies for reproduction. They crawl around the litter of forest and feed upon decaying matter using phagocytosis method (resembling like amoeba).
Arcyria sp.
Classification of Arcyria
Class: Myxogastria
Order: Trichiida
Family: Arcyriaceae
Genus: Arcyria
Colorful orange dotted spots over decaying woods, that's how I spotted slime mould "Arcyria". Their puffy little fruit bodies looks like tiny spots from distance. Cylindrical tiny structure on minute sized stalk is the common formation of Arcyria's fruit body which bursts into little cotton candy's and disseminate the spores on air. They also spend most of their life in single cells and produce fruit bodies when matured, similar to stemonitis.
Growing moulds on your apartment is not a good sign. They can cause serious health problems but their presence in nature is nothing but essential for a healthy environment. Slime moulds are truly fascinating. They vacuum up the detritus off decomposing them from our environment and plays a very vital role in keeping balance among the biospherical cycles. They're like magicians of the soil. I would like to call them a part of true guardians of nature for their contribution and looking forward to find more species in future.
