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Effect of temperature on slime mould growth.

I haven't started growing a slime mould yet but I was wondering if anyone has studied the effect of temperature on physarum polycephalum. I've seen temperatures of 20 and 25 degrees C as normal conditions but is this the optimum? Does a frisky physarum get sluggish if cooled to a couple of C? After all, a physarum in the wild will experience a wide range of temperatures.

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Permalink Reply by ian on October 15, 2021 at 8:10

I grow mine at 25ish - where the doubling time is about 10 hours, at 15C it's more like 20hours. If you shove one in the fridge it'll basically stop - but not die. At 35 physarum liquefies and stinks ( thermostat mishap). You've reminded me to get the incubator up and running.. I do wonder about temp preferences between strains now - but difficult to study with a home made temp control system.

They are highly thermotactic - I've played around with peltier blocks under the petri dishes but didn't build the heat syncs robust enough to keep them running well but you can 'steer' a slime with one block set to hot and the other to cold.

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Permalink Reply by AndyGadget on October 15, 2021 at 18:16

Thanks Ian, that's interesting info.

I've got a couple of peltier devices knocking around somewhere so I may have to dig them out.