Talk:Slime mold

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[edit] request

Please add more to the book references section. It may prove usefull to those that wish to further research any information in the article. Mechagnome 04:42, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Number of Species

This page should say how many species of slime mold there are. --Savant13 20:30, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

My (admittedly out of date) textbook says over 500, at the very least. -- 82.181.13.83 19:32, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Untitled

I seem to remember something about slime molds fitting into both the plant and animal categories--or sometimes one and sometimes the other? Anyone familiar with this and know how to explain it? (Or has time done another number on my database?)  ;-) --KQ

Under the old two-kingdom system, slime molds were considered both a class of fungi (Myxomycota), which went among the plants, and an order of amoebae (Myxozoa), which went among the animals. There's a brief note about the overlap between the two kingdoms on Protista but I haven't gone into any details of historical taxonomy because the modern stuff is already plenty to keep up with. As always, help is encouraged. :) --JG

This is fuzzy memory as well, but I Seem To Recall that some Slime Molds are able to somehow chemically herd or or otherwise effect the normal life-cycle of some bacteria (or whatever) type micro-thingies that they eat. I'll have to see if I can find where I read that... Anyway, nice to see that the less prominent lifeforms are not forgotten (ah! that gives me an idea for a minor edit.) -- Cimon Avaro on a pogo stick 10:31 1 Jun 2003 (UTC)

To KQ, The reason that slime moulds have historically fitted into both classifications is because they produce their own cellulose (meaning that it is a plant) but contrastingly it can sometimes have the appearance of and move like an animal. --FW

[edit] question

[edit] gender?

I seem to remember a high school bio teacher once telling me that slime molds have close to a dozen genders? is that right?

A: even worse, according to [[1]]: "in fact it’s a slime mold (genus Physarum), an otherworldly creature with 29 variants of sex-controlling genes, dispersed among eight different types of sex cells. To ensure genetic diversity, each slime mold sex cell can only fuse with a sex cell that has completely different variants of genes than its own. If you calculate all the possible combinations of genes and sex cells, you will find that Physarum have more than 500 different sexes." (ZooGoer 33(2) 2004. Copyright 2004 Friends of the National Zoo. All rights reserved.)

Dammit! I was gonna get a slime mold, dye it green to make it look cool, and keep it as a pet. But now I have to find out what to call it! What do I call it? He? She? Le? de? maybe I should find the name of the gender and make something up.

[edit] untitled

I read in Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" that slime molds change into sluglike beings and then plantlike things when their environment isn't suitable, but someone deleted my edit and called it rubbish!!! I was then accused of vandalism.:(

[edit] Unequal interwiki's

Just a note, because it should be changed later when more articles have been written. The interwiki's on this article are not not exactly congruent. The German (de:Schleimpilze) and Danish (da:Slimdyr) are about a lower taxon (Myxomycota) as compared to the the rest (Mycetozoa). Probably the order Myxogastria is equal to Myxomycota.

Secondly, there is much confusion about the names of the orders. I found this site: http://www.thallobionta.szm.sk/fungilich/myxo.htm quite clear, but it is in Slovak (so probably not readable for many native english speakers). At least the knowledge taxonomy of the Slime mould is not as clear as the article suggests. I found that most authors agree on putting it in the Protista kingdom, but the German wikipedia expresses much more doubt.

Taka 2 July 2005 17:50 (UTC)

The classification of slime moulds does vary a bit. However, most of the differences you're looking at involve older systems, which don't accurately reflect the modern understanding of the group. For instance, the German wikipedia is about essentially the same organisms as this page. It mentions three phyla:

  • Myxomycota, plasmodial slime moulds. In this case this is our Myxogastria, but note Myxomycota can also be used as a synonym for Mycetozoa.
  • Acrasiomycota, cellular slime moulds. It's now recognized that these include two separate groups, the dictyostelids and acrasids.
  • Plasmodiophoromycota, plasmodiophorids. These aren't considered slime moulds in newer systems, but are mentioned on this page.

I don't think there's that much doubt about the classification. With the move to phylogenetic kingdoms, they are definitely not classified as fungi, and Amoebozoa has broad though not universal support. The main variations are ranks (e.g. Mycetozoa may be a subkingdom) and botanical vs. zoological names (e.g. Echinosteliida may be given as Echinosteliales), but I think the major subgroups given are now essentially stable. Josh

Thanks for the clarifications.
  • Does this (english) article reflect the latest views and names?
  • Is there a reference (best to be found on internet) that you consider to be a reflecting the latest views.
  • what is with the Hydromyxomycetes (mentioned here)?

Taka 2 July 2005 18:19 (UTC)

I think the English article does, with the above caveats. If you're looking for particular genera, a good reference would be Systema Naturae 2000, which follows Cavalier-Smith. I didn't follow his ranks because his subphylum Conosa is not well-supported. The breakdown here is a concensus supported by cladistic analyses, but the ranks still seem to be variable, and I think this version comes from The Illustrated Handbook of Protozoa (1985).

I've never seen the Hydromyxomycetes in a slime mould classification before, old or new. I found a page that links them to the vampyrellids, which are not usually considered slime moulds. Several others mention Labyrinthula, though, and I imagine the name is mostly used to refer to the Labyrinthulomycetes. Proteomyxids were also mentioned, but this seems to be based on an older version of that name, too. Josh

[edit] taste?

how do they taste?

My, that's a yummy slime mold!

A tad slimy and slightly mouldy.
Please don't taste one. Many fungi are deadly poison. The bright colors might be a warning.Steve Dufour 19:29, 16 July 2006 (UTC)
Actually, at least a couple of species have been reported as edible. However, Myxomycota (under any name) is a pretty broad category, and there's certainly a chance that isn't universally the case. Serpent's Choice 11:18, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
I don't plan on eating any. :-) Steve Dufour 05:00, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 2 cm/Minute ?

Which Slime mould is capable of this impressive speed ? I'd like to know as it seems very fast for a slime mold ! Citation please !

Me too! I want to dye one green and keep it as a pet, and I want it to be a fast one.

[edit] Incorrect Picture

The image at the bottom right of the page is not a slime mold, but is Tremella mesenterica, a fungus. I don’t know how to change or delete the image. Could someone please change it.

Taken care of, although someone more Wikicapable might want to do somethign about the image/text alignment issues. Serpent's Choice 11:18, 5 August 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Question

Anyone know if it would be typical for a Slime mould under dry conditions, to release a spore cloud if sprayed with water?--Isotope23 00:36, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I believe so, yes. --Scix 04:51, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Question

some 20 years ago I saw an black and white video clip of a slime mould congregating into an organism and walking off - it was amazing - should there be a video clip in Wikipedia????

lovely idea. Do we just search one up on YouTube? --Scix 04:58, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mould vs Mold

I am curious whether there is a policy behind "mould" being listed as the normative spelling and "mold" as the American variant? Do we generally go for BritSpell in article names, or the most common spelling in print, or is it just sort of the prerogative of whomever starts the article? I honestly have no preferrence on the matter, it just struck me that I didn't KNOW how to choose one over the other, as an editor, I mean. --Scix 04:58, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

This is explained at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National_varieties_of_English.
The basic principle is:
  • If the topic is uniquely relevant to a particular English-speaking country (e.g. New York, Sydney Opera House, Queen Elizabeth II), we use the variety of English used in that country.
  • Otherwise, we stick with whatever variety of English the article happens to be written in.
This does lead to the slightly odd situation where you should use British spellings when editing this article, but American spellings when editing mold. But any other approach would alienate a large number of editors who felt that their variety of English was being marginalised, so this is how we do it. ^^
— Haeleth Talk 11:53, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Gotcha. Very clear, thanks. --Scix 05:54, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Whoever keeps messing with the mold v mould spelling can you cut it out, I'm going to revert to the English use which also clearly states the American spelling, even if you are going to change the articles language like that at least be thorough and put in the alternate spelling. My argument for doing this is that Slime mold redirects to Slime mould and the older versions of this article uses mould, so I assume the main editors want it this way! Having a title mismatch the article text is less than encyclopaedic to say the least. If there is to be further discussion on this do it here first. MattOates (Ulti) 09:56, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Speed

Does anyone have any idea of how fast a slime mould can travel in its Blob-like state? Also, can it dissolved anyone (ha ha) Scorpionman 20:31, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

LIKE 30MPH, FASTER THAN A MAN CAN RUN!!!

According to the text used in our A.P. Biology class (Biology, 6th Edition) the classification is wrong. We have that it should be Domain:Eukarya, Kingdom:Mycetozoa. Does anyone know anything about this difference? Is our book out of date or is there just a difference in opinion? 66.82.9.54 01:55, 20 December 2006 (UTC)KLJ 19 December, 2006

The classification varies a fair bit. However, treating the Mycetozoa as a kingdom probably reflects not knowing their relationships, and in that respect the book is slightly out-of-date. Josh
anyone with updated classification information care to share with the rest of us? EuroBrydGang

[edit] hmm this has some major flaws

there are two major groups: plasmodial slime molds:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmodial_Slime_Mold

not alot of info there.

and cellular slime molds: split by wiki into: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrasiomycota and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictyosteliomycota

i see, this is a redirect for mycetazoa

woops and then we have another dictyostelid page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictyostelid

how much more can i find?

anyway: the intro to THIS general wiki describes ONLY the cellular slime molds. then in types it describes both plasmodial and cellular, but it does not give the correct link to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasmodial_Slime_Mold

It looks like quite a mess. would someone like to help me find all the scattered wikis and we can clean it up? i don't quite know yet all the procedures for deleting and redirecting.Wikiskimmer 11:09, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

What do you have in mind for the slime mould page? I think it would be a mistake to make one article from all the current ones. I recently created acrasin and was thinking about adding to this from some of the other articles and tidying up, so I'd be happy to take from your lead. MattOates (Ulti) 13:59, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
I've found a nest of over half a dozen pages and even more terms without wikis that are all confused. i am making a map of them all and will present a proposal.
how do i find all the people who might want to be involved and where do i post it?Wikiskimmer 19:35, 1 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, i've gone and done a major edit. i've made the slime mould page about myxogastria, protostelia, and dictyosteliida. I put only a small discussion of dictyosteliida because i refer to the excellent aricle Dictyosteliida. In the intro and in the description of different types i described the three other groups that are sometimes called slime moulds. i added some links to 3 species accounts. i suspect there are more in the wiki system. we can hunt.
I unlinked things to the Dictyosteliomycota because that page sucks compared to the Dictyosteliida page. at some point we gotta decide whether to put the acrasid info in here: percolozoa or here: Acrasiomycota. Neither page has alot of info on acrasids. hard to find! i also unlinked some things from the myxomycota page and linked them to the slime mould page, because the myxo page sucks.Wikiskimmer 05:26, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Academic Naming

The academic community prefers the term "slime mold", even in the UK. Naming this article "slime mould" is faintly silly. Here are some statistics, backing this up:

  • google for '"slime mold" site:ac.uk' => 2,960 hits
  • google for '"slime mould" site:ac.uk' => 482 hits

The controversy over the article name is unfortunate in such a clear cut case. It's more fun to fight over articles like Spectacles or whatever it is named now. Daniel Quinlan 20:34, 13 October 2007 (UTC)

We should start to move over to "Slime mold" then if no one has any objections. Which makes sense on wikipedia anyway since mould -> mold. The problem comes from the constant inconsistency in the article more than what language variant is being used. It looks more than faintly silly when mold and mould is used within the same sentence. MattOates (Ulti) 12:28, 15 October 2007 (UTC)