So, I've been growing slime molds and predatory slime molds for a few weeks now to observe multicellular aggregation. Unfortunately, my home lab isn't 100% sterile and occasionally samples become contaminated. Most of the time this just means it's time to throw out the sample, but on this occasion something interesting happened that I thought might be worth inquiring about. An unknown variety of white mold contaminated my petri dish of Physarum polycephalum, with two colonies growing adjacent to slime mold bodies. Both bodies fruited shortly after contamination. This could be a fluke. It is possible that those bodies were ready to fruit anyway, though one was sitting directly on a mostly undigested oat flake so I doubt they were responding to food supply shortage, which is the norm. Even this does not prove that the protists were responding to the mold since slime molds do occasionally fruit spontaneously. With out a doubt more experiments will have to be performed. It is interesting however. Anyone here know of any records of P. Polycephalum responding to predation or competition in it's environment?
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