An international network of/for intelligent organisms

Keeping slime molds?

I'm still seeing if I wanna just wait till I can find it in the woods or just order it online.
Couldn't seem to find much info on this but, if you have slime mold how do you keep it going ? I'm nervous to spend the 50 bucks for it just to shrivel up and die.
What containers work best for the long term?(like a terrarium a Mason jar etc)
What to do if it does go dormant?
Joined this group hoping I could learn more about slime molds

Plus on a side note I have a terrarium of wolf spiders, ear wigs and crickets. Was really curious to see how the slime mold would react to that environment or possibly if the mold would work as a sort of cleaning agent for the dead insects in the cage

1 member likes this

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by ian on December 31, 2019 at 9:32

The learning experiments are all done with clones when two slimes meet, if they're not genetically identical bad things happen to one of them. Sometimes they'll just ignore each other, sometimes they make contact and one suddenly gets horrible necrosis before being consumed by the other, when it looks like they merge that's not what's going on - there's a massive biochemical fight going on inside the merging cells with nucleii and organelles on both sides being enveloped in autophagosomes ( digestive vacuoles) to be destroyed or just shoved out of the cell via open pores - this can take a few days but the winner is genetically determined - kinda Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets Rock Scissors Paper only with a lot more mucous.

Got footage of three strains meeting here - at about 55s you can see the wave of necrosis (ooh good band name!) rotting poor J https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj4z-0Lxc-s

My little light proof one basically just can't make spores so light exposure doesn't kill it,

Drop me a pm and I'll get slime in the post for you

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Brent on January 1, 2020 at 2:44

That's amazing. Would love to get a look at that under a microscope

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by RyChu on January 1, 2020 at 3:21

For slime mold care notes:

Here is a folder w/ some general info on slime molds: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1BYdpvPxnUNgdqqu1ELHTnbWlc0c...

Here are some amazing notes by Ian

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KtuQAFo8hahywijeZDfjOOnn6npH2Wr2/v...

I'll be adding some detailed notes into this document within a week I hope with some tips which I learned from experience:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dBsM7guzfTmMhaqQB-ZyqIwZumx3uZE...

Under the Links tab of slimoco, you can also find a Repository where Ian has uploaded a ton of great papers about slime molds