Grow your own myxomycete
The large lumps are soggy oat flakes (food), the fine yellow vein like strands
are the myxomycet plasmodia, these looked promising yesterday, then this
morning there were several black specks on the culture (see photo).
I'm thinking oh no they are being attacked by mold (fungal), i removed a
group and selected one for microscope (put rest in seperate petri dish to see what happens).
X1000
The veiw under scope looks not unlike spores, it seems from (Stephenson and Stempen) that the
plasmodium is producing Sclerotia (grouped,resistant macrocysts) that myxomycetes do if the
environment is not totally to their liking. They can persist in the environment for a long time like
this waiting for good conditions, and can change back to plasmodium at will.
In the photo it looks like dust all over the image, these are the flagellate swarm cells that origonaly
emerged from the spores, (how many million?), they can form the macrocysts or carry on as part of the plasmodium.
This does explain nicely why myxomycetes are not fungi, in this state with their flagella (porpeller
like tail), engulfing bacteria as food they are more akin to zoo plankton. Assuming the sclerotia are
being formed due to lack of food (maybe a differnt reason!) i have given them some more food,
and will let the box dry a little so more of them become amaeboid (loose flagella and crawl around)
two forms which they can swap at will (are these things clever).
Cheers J.P.