Slime mould

Perhaps not the most exciting or attractive area of wildlife, but slime moulds really fascinate me. I was actually looking for tiny cup-fungi today, but when I turned over this rotting ash branch I could see some tiny brown spheres on stalks - each less than a millimetre across - and knew I had found the fruiting bodies, or sporangia, of a slime mould - probably Trichia decipiens. There is still no agreement on the precise classification of these amazing organisms. They used to be thought of as fungi, but now are generally thought of as a diverse set of genera within the group of Amoebozoa in the broad kingdom of Protozoa. Their common name comes from a feature, shared by many of the species, where part of the complex life-cycle is spent with hundreds of the single-celled organisms congregating into a gelatinous slime on the surface of logs, rotting vegetable material or soil. This slime mass can move in search of food and has even been shown, in laboratory experiments, to be capable of negotiating mazes. So...single celled or multiple celled organism? Animal, plant, fungus? They may not be everyone's 'cup of tea', but they are fascinating.