Slime Mold: Conservation, Control, and More Cool Facts

Summary: Want more cool facts about slime mold? Who doesn’t!? Join Kiersten for more unbelievable facts about slime mold.

 

For my hearing impaired listeners, a complete transcript of this podcast follows the show notes on Podbean

 

Show Notes:

“Slime Molds: No Brains, No Feet, No Problem,” Science Thursday. PBS. https://www.pbs.org

“100 million years in amber: Researchers discover oldest fossilized slime mold,” University of Gottingen. Science Daily. https://www.sciencedaily.com

“Slime Molds” by Dr. Sharon M. Douglas, Department of Plant Pathology and Ecology, The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. https://portal.ct.gov

Music written and performed by Katherine Camp

 

Transcript 

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host, and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

The last episode of Slime Mold has arrived. It’s bitter sweet for me because I have loved researching this organism but I’m also excited about which  creature will come next. We’re going out with a bang though, the tenth thing I like about slime mold is that there are so many more cool facts about it!

Before we delve into the the amazing facts we haven’t yet discussed about slime mold, let’s talk about conservation and control.

Slime mold is not in any need of conservation methods at the time. The species that we know about are all doing well. There is plenty of places for slime mold to thrive and some species, like the Dog Vomit Slime Mold, are doing better than ever because of our need to use mulch on our landscaped gardens. This is good news for this organism, but we have to keep in mind that disappearing habitat like forests and wetlands means that all creatures that rely on these areas are at risk. As we change the landscape around us to fit our needs, we take away habitat that these organisms rely on to survive. That does include slime mold.

Many people contact local gardening clubs and college extensions to ask how to control slime mold that they find in their gardens. The only thing you need to do, is scoop out the mulch that is growing on and throw it out. Slime mold doesn’t harm plants that it is near or on. Most of the time it dries out and goes away before it can damage any plants that you might find it on. So control is a moot point, really, and after listening to this series, I hope you get excited about the slime mold you find in your backyard!

Okay let’s talk about some of the other cool facts about slime mold. 

If slime mold gets torn apart it can reform! The protoplasm of slime mold allows it to be separated and reform again when the pieces get near each other. Each tiny bit is interchangeable. Every individual protoplasm unit of slime mold can become a vein or limb-like projection that reaches out in the direction the mold wants to travel. There are, however, organelles inside the slime mold that are unable to do this. They are fixed as organelles and never change. 

It does beg the question can you kill slime mold? “It’s hard to say,” says Tanya Latty, an Australian researcher studying slime mold. There is a beetle that eats slime mold, but can it eat enough to kill an individual glob? “We don’t know if they eat enough of the body to make a difference,” continues Latty. “You could lose half of the biomass and it wouldn’t matter. It would just reorganize itself and be like, “I’m fine!” End quote. 

If you can’t kill slime mold, how long can it live? Excellent question, but we have no idea how long slime mold can live. When it dries out its called a sclerotia and it can survive like this for up to two years and still be revived with a little bit of moisture. As of the recoding of this podcast in 2024, a zoo in Paris has a slime mold currently on display in its plasmodial form that they acquired in 2019. That’s five years of living as a protoplasm. 

How long has slime mold been on earth? British and German scientists estimate that slime mold may have evolved 600 million years ago. In 2020 researchers discovered the oldest fossilized slime mold. It was a 100 million year old sample preserved in amber. 

For organisms without feet, slime mold can travel some long distances. When in its plasmodial form the blob can travel one inch an hour (I may never complain about rush hour traffic again!), but it’s not this form that allows them to travel all over the world. When reproducing, the spores are released into the air and have, somehow, travelled on the wind around the globe. There are slime molds with identical genetic structure found in the United States and New Zealand. That is an amazingly long way to travel on the wind!

Speaking of genetics…during the RNA editing phase slime mold genes make uncommonly large numbers of corrections. They are continually making changes to its original plans. Jonatha Gott of Case Western University says, “As it’s making a copy of the DNA, it changes it. It’s incredibly precise and incredibly accurate. If it does’t do this, it dies. It’s a really crazy way to express genes.” It also makes it incredibly interesting to scientists developing ways to cure cancer.

I have no doubt that the list of cool facts about slime mold will continue to grow as we learn more about this unbelievable organism. I’m glad I was able to share some of the cool facts we currently know about slime mold with all of my listeners because that’s my tenth favorite thing about slime mold.

If you're enjoying this podcast please recommend me to friends and family and take a moment to give me a rating on whatever platform your listening. It will help me reach more listeners and give the animals I talk about an even better chance at change. 

 

Join me in two weeks for a new series about another misunderstood or unknown creature.    

 

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.