page_title: Myxogastria
section_title: Fructification
hierarchical_section_title: Myxogastria / Characteristics and life cycle / Fructification
caption_attribution_description: I was shooting slime mold fruiting bodies and he wandered by. It was interesting to see this critter run daintily among the little spore laden stalks. I noticed that the bug was careful with them, not stepping on the fruit, but weaving among them. I wonder if there is some unknown ecological relationship between them. Or maybe the simple life understands something about the environment.
context_page_description: Myxogastria/Myxogastrea or Myxomycetes, is a class of slime molds that contains 5 orders, 14 families, 62 genera and 888 species. They are colloquially known as the plasmodial or acellular slime moulds.
  All species pass through several, very different morphologic phases, such as microscopic individual cells, slimy amorphous organisms visible with the naked eye and conspicuously shaped fruit bodies. Although they are monocellular, they can reach immense widths and weights: in extreme cases they can be up to 1 metre across and weigh up to 20 kilograms.
  The class Myxogastria is distributed worldwide, but it is more common in temperate regions where it has a higher biodiversity than in polar regions, the subtropics or tropics. They are mainly found in open forests, but also in extreme regions such as deserts, under snow blankets or underwater. They also occur on the bark of trees, sometimes high in the canopy. These are known as corticolous myxomycetes. Most species are very small.
context_section_description: Mature plasmodia can produce fruit bodies under appropriate circumstances, the exact triggers for this process are unknown. According to laboratory researchers, changes in humidity, temperature or pH value as well as starvation periods were thought to be the triggers in some species. The plasmodia abandon their nutrient intake and crawl, attracted by light – a positive phototaxis – towards a dry, light area, to get an optimal spread of the spores. Once the fructification begins, it can not be stopped. If disturbances occur, malformed spore-bearing fruit bodies are often produced.
  The plasmodium or parts of the fruit bodies can be smaller than one millimetre, in extreme cases they are up to a square metre and weigh up to 20 kilograms (44 lb) (Brefeldia maxima). Their shape is often pediculated or unstiped sporangia with non-cellular stems, but can also appear as veined ar netted plasmodiocarps, pincushion-shaped aethaliae or seemingly pincushion-shaped pseudo-aethaliae. The fruit bodies almost always have a hypothallus on the edge. The abundantly produced spores are stored in a reticular or filamentous structure –  the so-called capillitium – and are found on nearly all species except Liceida and other species from the genus Echinostelium. When the open fruit bodies have dried, the spores are dispersed by wind or by small animals such as woodlice, mites or beetles, which either pick up the spores through contact with the fruit bodies or ingest and then excrete them. Dispersal by running water is also possible, but it plays a minor role.
caption: Woodlouse with myxogastria spores
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