Hello new members and old esp SYSK listeners Slimefest anyone?

[ian]

Hello and a special welcome to the Stuff You Should Know fans

for people who haven't heard it, they did a great podcast on slimes - https://tunein.com/podcasts/Science-Podcasts/Stuff-You-Should-Know-... 

I said a while ago that we should have another online meet - then I vanished. 

It was finals fortnight at work - which gets stupid busy at the best of times and my slime activities have been limited to rearing huge amounts of Daywalker for an exhibition 

The students have now gone, I've waved a tearful goodbye to my own student and a big box of slimes, things are back to 'normal'. 

So anyone up for a meet? I can put a doodle poll together

cheers

Ian

[Mikayla]

I found out about you from SYSK this week, and I'm so excited to learn more! I previously spent years working in the Melbourne lab at the University of Colorado which uses Tribolium flour beetles as a model organism to study population dynamics, stochasticity, and invasive species spread. Now, I work as a tattoo artist in Denver, Colorado. I am very curious about slime molds, and have numerous questions about them- how quickly can they gain mass? At a certain size, would something trigger them split into multiple colonies (not sure if that's the correct terminology)? I also find them strangely beautiful and think they could make some interesting abstract tattoo designs.

[ian]

Flour beetles! We have them in the lab too.. Physarum can double in around 10 hours once it's got going. In the 'wild' - terrarium or in a sparsley fed dish they'll frequently split - and join up again but kept fed I routinely bulk them up to 1/4 Square meter and did a full square meter once. 

I've been wondering about a slime tattoo...