Day 231: Lycogala epidendrum ("Wolf's-milk") is a slime mold, despite its resemblance to a fungus. What is the difference? Well, a fungus is a single life-form. What we see and call a "mushroom" is its fruiting body. The main part of its structure is in the soil or other substrate, i.e., the mycelium, and that "body" may extend for a surprising distance. On the other hand, a slime mold is a group of single-celled organisms which have come together to feed and breed in response to chemical signals transmitted by others of their kind. Unlike the mushrooms in your collection basket, slime molds are capable of movement. They are also capable of communication in the form of those chemical signals I just mentioned, and they are capable of cooperation. This places them in a unique position cladistically, having at some point branched off from the Archaea to follow their own evolutionary path as the bacteria went the other way. Although the terms Protist and Protoctista are now considered obsolete, slime molds can be referred to as "protists" because their cellular structure is unlike that of plants, animals or fungi. Many of them spend most of their lives within their chosen substrate, as does the Ceratiomyxa of yesterday's post. I suspect that Lycogala behaves in a similar fashion because I find it in the same locations year after year. It emerges only during its breeding time. A "spent" colony can be seen as a black mass above the fresh pink "fruit" in this photo.
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