Do individual slime have personalities?

[Sarah Vitak]

New to slime! I don't even have one yet. But I'm just curious if people have observed individual slimes (presumably from different sources) to have different preferences or behaviors?

[ian]

Hi 

Different species vary hugely in what they'll eat, how big they get and how complex a network they'll make but with Physarum polycephalum in mind - I'm working on that. 

Thing is almost everybody is working with clone populations of a very small number of genetically distinct individuals. You'd expect one Mazie to behave just like another given the same situation. I'm raising from spores, trying to cross and select and yeah the can be different but it's subtle.

The obvious one is colour - they go from white (very rare) to deep orange though most you'd just look at and say yellow. 

Some spend a longer time on a food patch, they vary in how much they'll spread out, their fractal dimension seems vary ( crinkliness). The problem I'm having is all these are affected by other things and there's a lot of overlap so proving it is turning out to be hard and tedious.

In your title though you say personalities, I wonder - does a slime mould actually have an experience, even in most rudimentary sense, are they just stimulus-response or is there the slightest glimmer of a thought?