What is slime mold classified as?
Slime molds are classified in the Kingdom Protista (the Protists), despite many years of having been classified as fungi, in the class Myxomycetes. The Myxomycota are the true (plasmodial) slime molds and the Acrasiomycota are the cellular slime molds.
What are the three types of slime molds?
Slime molds represent several different lineages: the cellular slime molds (Dictyostelids), Protostelids, and plasmodial slime molds (Myxomycetes). These organisms move about as amoebae consuming bacteria until conditions become unfavorable, at which point they form spores.
What is slime mold made of?
There are two types of slime molds. The cellular slime molds are composed of single amoeboid cells during their vegetative stage, whereas the vegetative acellular slime molds are made up of plasmodia, amorphic masses of protoplasm.
Why are slime molds not classified as fungi?
The plasmodium ingests bacteria, fungal spores, and maybe other smaller protozoa. Their ingestion of food is one reason slime molds are not considered to be fungi. Fungi produce enzymes that break down organic matter into chemicals that are absorbed through their cell walls, not ingested.
Are slime molds single-celled?
Slime mold, in fact, is a soil-dwelling amoeba, a brainless, single-celled organism, often containing multiple nuclei.
What are the 2 types of slime molds?
The most common classification system places slime molds in two phyla: Phylum Myxomycota and Phylum Acrasiomycota. The Myxomycota are the true (plasmodial) slime molds and the Acrasiomycota are the cellular slime molds.
Is mold a fungus?
Molds include all species of microscopic fungi that grow in the form of multicellular filaments, called hyphae. Molds can thrive on any organic matter, including clothing, leather, paper, and the ceilings, walls and floors of homes with moisture management problems. There are many species of molds.
When a slime mold forms a plasmodium what type of organism does it resemble?
In its creeping phase it resembles an amoeba and is known as a myxamoeba. Both swarm cells and myxamoebae function as sex cells (gametes), and the fusion of two such cells constitutes the reproductive act of myxomycetes that begins the next stage of growth, the plasmodium.
Is slime mold multicellular or unicellular?
The so-called cellular slime mold, a unicellular organism that may transition into a multicellular organism under stress, has just been found to have a tissue structure that was previously thought to exist only in more sophisticated animals.