#slime moulds

[myxomycota]

Lobella sauteri eating Lycogala conicum

by m.k_matto

[fungisamongis]

Species: Carnival candy slime mold (Arcyria denudata)

Location of specimen: Southeast United States

[maxwellshimbo]

So last week I learned that slime moulds can solve the Traveling Salesperson problem in linear time.

My first thought was So PvsNP is solved??

But then I remembered that slime moulds are not Turing machines.

[vothnthorvaldson-blog]

Subjects most likely to be posted on my blog :

Lichens. Lots of lichens. Lichens are my main special interest ; I particularly love the Peltigera genus.

Myxomycetes, liverworts, mosses ;

Flowers, especially wild orchids ;

Fungi, animals ;

Pages from my comic (which does not have a permanent home right now, but temporarily (?) lives here https://comicfury.com/comicprofile.php?url=moonovermarsh;

Embroidery, various fiber arts;

Fabrics, patterns, sewing; Miniatures 1/12 to 1/6.

Edit March 22, 2024:

I made a secondary blog for fandoms, as I wish to keep this one mostly for my own nature-related content.

https://www.tumblr.com/vothnthorvaldsonfandomblog will be a mix of reblogs and my own content. My main fandoms are TES (Morrowind and Skyrim mostly, but not only) and Moomin . But I may also post about others that I'm either less involved into, or that are more niche.

[acelania]

The specific slime used is Physarum polycephalum, which got briefly popular back in 2019 when the Paris Zoological Park put one on display!

In addition, the designers (Jasmine Lu and Pedro Lopes, from the University of Chicago's Human Computer Integration Lab) have put the specs for the watch itself up on GitHub for public access:

researchers built wearable heart rate sensors powered by slime molds that had to be fed like Tamagotchis and literally everyone involved with the study began personifying their little heart rate friends

[stardust-bridges]

Club Furies Premiere: Centeno - Descendre [Diffuse Reality]

From Córdoba, Argentina, producer CENTENO presents his work entitled Slime Moulds, a collection of four original tracks that the Spanish platform Diffuse Reality Records has signed to its catalogue. The title of the work may refer to slime moulds (Phylum Mycetozoa), divided into cellular moulds and true slime moulds, found in damp soils where they feed on living bacteria. While the name of the…

[vincentbriggs]

The third and final leaf vest in my video, and my favourite of the 3, is this dark brown late autumn leaf. It's quilted, but much less densely than the previous one, and I pieced it together out of 2 slightly different shades of brown cotton.

The veins are embroidered in whipped chain stitch (for the denser areas I whipped all the rows together 2 at a time) and there are some patches of blanket stitch honeycomb to imitate venules. I wanted the leaf to look a little bit rotten. The beads along part of the bottom edge are inspired by a beautiful photo of slime mould growing along the edge of a leaf posted by Bea Leiderman on instagram.

[sajanrai]

Myxmy - a sentient slime mould masquerading as humanoid

[myxomycota]

Tubifera ferruginosa

by sluzowce.sudetow

[mycosprite]

Dog Vomit Slime Mould Fuligo septica

[fungisamongis]

Species: Dog vomit slime mold (Fuligo septica)

Location of specimens: Southeast United States

Note: Slime molds, especially this species, can be split into pieces and find their way back to the other parts. They change shape/texture while forming and moving

[wild-e-eep]

... 8 hours later:

This is Arcyria cinerea much beloved of various small, creeping things, and me also. <3

[saccharine222]

Trichia decipiens

(Salmon egg slime mould) 🍣

[mycoblogg]

Whats the difference between lichen, moss, mould and mushrooms if they're all fungus? Aren't they all the same sorta thing?

so, interestingly, all of these groups are very different !! instead of naming the differences, let me quickly explain what exactly these organisms are.

lichen :

lichens are symbiotic organisms, meaning they are in themselves the product of a relationship between different organisms. to simplify it, lichens are big part fungus, & smaller part algae (protista) or cyanobacteria (monera). these different forms of life together create lichen, which grows on trees, rocks, leaves, mosses & sometimes other lichens !! to read more about lichens, check out @/lichenaday's blog :-)

moss :

mosses are actually not fungi at all !! they are small, flowerless plants. they grow on trees & in soil. :-)

mould :

mould is a type of structure that fungi can form - it is entirely fungal. it reproduces through airborne spores :-) there are many different types of mould ; some are toxic, some are used medicinally, & some are saprotrophs. (note : slime moulds & water moulds are unrelated to fungal moulds !!)

mushrooms :

so, lots of people think mushrooms are a species of fungus, but they are not. "mushroom" refers to the fruiting body of a fungus ; what a mushroom is to a fungus is comparable to what a flower is to a tree - the part that reproduces !! not all fungi produce mushrooms (e.g. moulds, which do not have fruiting bodies as the entire organism is able to release spores). there are currently only 14 000 discovered fungi that produce mushrooms !! more fungi that don't produce mushrooms include mildew, yeast & lichen.

so, yes !! they're all quite different in structure, cells & function in the ecosystem.

[mushroomgay]

I don't know what this white slime mould is, but the tiny forests of it carpeting this wood were beautiful.

[locusfandomtime]

see the fandom has this thing where the hermits are different species and when they’re part animal/mob they’re a hybrid but nobody talks about the even funnier canon lore that they’re all the exact same species. Their species is hermit.

[long post - lots of worldbuilding and speculative biology below]

Jevin looks like a slime, Doc looks like that, most of them look human, but in actuality they’re all just hermits. The only information we have about this is that hermits are shorter than the average player, some references to hobbits, some references to hermits being hardworking, the fact that gem isn’t a hermit and had to wear antlers to pretend to be one, and that’s it.

I love biology and worldbuilding and this is fascinating to me. When you take into account previous seasons and events and throw-away lines this gets even more insane. Grian and Hypno are acknowledged to not have mouths (and even more hermits don’t have them on their skin). Mumbo turned into a potato. Cleo had snake hair at one point. There are a million other weird things I’m forgetting. You could handwave some of this with an explanation like “hermits are shapeshifters” or “hermits are gods” and that is a very valid and fun take but I think it is SO much funnier if these are just normal things that happen in the hermit species, which aren’t fantastical at all and are adaptations with elaborate mechanics and explanations.

Perhaps hermits, similar to bugs, regularly shed their skin (or a process similar to it) and change their appearance. Some insects change colours/appearance due to their environment rather than genetics, ie macleays spectre stick insects can turn lichen colours when raised around lichen. Maybe the hermits shed their skins on a regular basis, including during their adult life, and this allows them to better match their environment- causing physical changes related to what they have been exposed to. This causes potato Mumbo and medusa Cleo and DM Tango and any other example of a specific skin change. For more constant differences in appearance - maybe life cycles could be considered?

this may be the weirdest thing I’ve ever made. For those that don’t know, “n” is the number of chromosomes, where n is the haploid number, so 2n is diploid. Diploid cells are necessary for sexual reproduction. Of course, a lot of these life cycles are centered around reproduction, as is the nature of a life cycle, but in reality the hermits are in no rush and are happy to stay at whatever point of the life cycle they’re at, this is just an outline of the species’ mechanics.

I mean, most of this diagram is conjecture… but I think it is interesting to consider! Jevin especially reminded me a lot of slime mould life cycles so this is heavily inspired off that, but also inspired by bug life cycles as well.

If you want to get even more indepth we can consider the gender roles of hermit society (remember that clip where Grian implied builders were housewives and redstoners were breadwinning husbands?). Perhaps we can get meta and consider respawn an aspect of being a hermit as well - are they able to regenerate after death? What is Cleo’s place in all this, being undead? Is arm thickness, where your arm can either be 3px or 4px wide, an example of sexual dimorphism?

but. well. tldr: the hermits being one species is a very fun idea we should be doing more with, i think