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Physarum pusillum (Berk et M. A Curtis)
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.
Humid high mountain forest in the Andes.
http://www.physarumplus.org/ http://www.discoverlife.org/mp/20q?searc...
Spotted on May 16, 2014
Submitted on May 16, 2014
4 Comments
Physarum pusillum (Berk et M. A Curtis)
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.