Weirdly Pretty, and Pretty Weird! ;)
Last Thursday I got up to Ward Pound Ridge Reservation during one of Lizzy's last dance rehearsals, and took some pictures on what was a cloudy and damp day.
I took a photo of a weird looking life form which I figured out later must be a Slime Mold, which seems a pretty alien type of creature compared to what we are used to seeing!
For instance, the photo I took which is beneath the cut I think is a plasmodium or animal-like (motile) stage of the Myxomycota phylum of slime molds.
This starts to sound creepy: "The motile phase is commonly found under rotting logs and damp leaves, where cellulose is abundant. It consists...of a coenocytic (multinucleate) mass of protoplasm called a plasmodium, which creeps about by ameboid movement. Plasmodia often grow to a diameter of several inches and are frequently brightly colored....They ingest solid food particles using a process called phagocytosis (the cellular process of engulfing solid particles by the cell membrane to form an internal "food vacuole").
"Slime molds feed on living microorganisms, such as bacteria and yeasts, as well as decaying vegetation. Before entering the reproductive stage, a plasmodium moves to a drier, better-lit place, such as the top of a log."
That is where I saw mine, it looked like a very nice spot, and whitish tendrils to the rear of the slime mold perhaps indicate where it had "crawled" from! ;)
I guess it looks a little like "The Blob" although I doubt the Blob was such a pretty color! ;)
I took a photo of a weird looking life form which I figured out later must be a Slime Mold, which seems a pretty alien type of creature compared to what we are used to seeing!
For instance, the photo I took which is beneath the cut I think is a plasmodium or animal-like (motile) stage of the Myxomycota phylum of slime molds.
This starts to sound creepy: "The motile phase is commonly found under rotting logs and damp leaves, where cellulose is abundant. It consists...of a coenocytic (multinucleate) mass of protoplasm called a plasmodium, which creeps about by ameboid movement. Plasmodia often grow to a diameter of several inches and are frequently brightly colored....They ingest solid food particles using a process called phagocytosis (the cellular process of engulfing solid particles by the cell membrane to form an internal "food vacuole").
"Slime molds feed on living microorganisms, such as bacteria and yeasts, as well as decaying vegetation. Before entering the reproductive stage, a plasmodium moves to a drier, better-lit place, such as the top of a log."
That is where I saw mine, it looked like a very nice spot, and whitish tendrils to the rear of the slime mold perhaps indicate where it had "crawled" from! ;)
I guess it looks a little like "The Blob" although I doubt the Blob was such a pretty color! ;)