A worldwide community photographing and learning about wildlife
Project Noah Nature School
Brefeldia maxima
A white plasmodial slime mold with a jelly like plasmodium and vesicular fruiting bodies (like tapioca pearls) seen as clumps on a pine tree log. Vesicles were shiny and slightly sticky. Pic #5 shows less developed vesicles but the mass was larger in size. Pic #3 shows small black ants around the vesicles. The clumps would have been about 50mm wide and 100 mm long.
Tree log - nature reserve-some moisture seen inside the log -
According to ALA, this species is not recorded here. But, I have no matches for anything in Australia, except for Ceratiomyxa fructiculosa, which has a slightly different appearance. This was spotted on Pine so I will leave it as Brefeldia for now.
The ants are supposedly feeding on an exudate from the aethalium ( fruiting body). Henrik Kylin in his article, Mycologist,May 2001 states that several species of arthropods feed on this slime mold - this includes ants, moths and isopods.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:B...
http://www.wisconsinmushrooms.com/Brefel...
Spotted on Sep 19, 2012
Submitted on Sep 23, 2012
1 Comment
It is amazing how similar it looks to Tapioca which has been soake din water overnite. Good find!