Slime Mold Collecting

• The year – 1973; the place – Dallas, Texas; the issue – a large, outgrowth of oozing, spreading yellowish blobs climbing telephone poles and crossing lawns.
• Fear about alien life forms spread across the city.
• Firemen were called in to assist but efforts to destroy it with a high-pressure hose only made it grow more.
• It took several days, and many articles in the national media, before a mycologist recognized it for what it was and shortly thereafter it decomposed of its own accord.
• What was it?
• A slime mold.
  
  
• Read more about slime molds.
  
  
• Learn how to collect slime molds below.

Collecting Instructions:

Once located (typically on decaying wood or other vegetation), collect a portion of the substrate upon which the fruiting bodies are growing. Place in a protective cover (small paper bag or box) for transport to the lab. There, the collections are air-dried by leaving them opened on a shelf for a few days. After that, specimens are glued to the bottom of a paper box and stored in a protected, dry area. These are rather fragile so care in moving them must be heeded. Once dry, collections will (in theory) last for centuries!

Slime mold spores can also be found on dry vegetation and in herbivorous animal droppings. At specified sites – marked by GPS coordinates preferably (see Guidelines for Collecting GPS Data), collect dry plant samples from the upper sections (leaves, stems, and flowers). Size of each sample is no more than enough to cover the palm of your hand. Place sample in a paper bag, label by site number, date, and collector. Identify the plant or animal species if possible.

(See different instructions for snowbank myxomycete collecting below).

Eumycetozoan Collecting:

• Site: a collecting stop.
• Substrate Collection (for protostelids and myxomycetes): an individual bag of substrate. Ideally, it will consist of about two good handfuls of substrate that is air dried and stored in a small paper bag (e.g., lunch bag). Never store collections in plastic bags.
• Paired Substrate Collection: Two collections, 1 from standing dead plant material (e.g., grasses, forbs, twigs, dead leaves, tree bark) and 1 of the same type of material that has fallen to the ground below. If it is not possible to get only the material of interest from the ground, get what you can. Designate the each collection in the pair with the same collecting number followed by “a” for the aerial substrate and “g” for the ground substrate.
• Collection Set: 5 to 10 paired collections from a site.
• Specimen Collection: A specimen of a myxomycete fruiting body collected in the field and mounted in a small box. Fruiting bodies of many myxomycetes are large enough to be easily seen in the field and can be brought back to the lab for identification and preparation for storage in an herbarium.

• Take and record a GPS reading (see Guidelines for Collecting GPS Data). (If you move more than 500 meters from the initial reading for one collection set, take and record another if possible.)

• Record the type of habitat and include some general physical and geographic information.

• For Protostelid and Myxomycete Substrates: Begin collecting paired collections and record the type of substrate with the collection number. (It is easy to use a collecting number that starts with an abbreviation for the country or state/province, the last two digits of the year, the number of the collection in order, and the designation “a” or “g” for aerial or ground respectively.) For example, SA03-1a and SA03-1g could represent the first paired samples from South Africa in 2003. Record the collection number on the collecting bag and in the collecting notebook. It is not necessary to always collect paired samples. Samples of bark, pieces of downed wood, or dung may be collected singly. Paired samples are most appropriate when collecting the same type of substrate in both the aerial and ground microhabitats (e.g., dead grasses that are still standing and dead grasses that have fallen over and are decomposing on the ground).

Care of Substrate Collections

Collection of Substrates for Dictyostelid Isolation

From each site, collect 5 to 10 collections of humus-rich soil from the litter/soil interface. In addition to the location or plot name, I'd like to have GPS coordinates if possible (see Guidelines for Collecting GPS Data). I could handle material from one or two locations at a time and the sampling could be spread out over time (several months to a year)

Collecting just involves scraping away the intact leaf litter on the ground and using a nearby stick or twig to scoop material from the soil-litter interface into a bag. Each collection should contain about ten soupspoons (20-50 grams) of material and should be kept in a sterile plastic bag such as a Whirl-Pak. The collections should be stored in a cooler at approximately 15C if possible.

One also should look for specialized microhabitats in which soil-like material can be found above the ground, such as (1) on epiphytic plants with structures that tend to retain decaying plant matter and various types of organic debris or (2) beneath mats of vascular epiphytes and/or bryophytes.

John C. Landolt
Department of Biology
Shepherd College
Shepherdstown, WV 25443 U.S.A.
jlandolt@shepherd.edu

Snowbank Myxomycetes

About collecting them, a note from Dr. Steve Stephenson:

The so-called "snowbank" myxomycetes are species that fruit along the edges of melting snowbanks during late spring and early summer in alpine regions of the world.

Members of the group are limited to this microhabitat (i.e., they are not found anywhere else). Snowbank are quite common in the Rocky Mountains but the Appalachians here in eastern North America don't reach elevations high enough to have snowbanks that far enough into the year.

However, under exceptional circumstances,at the very highest elevations, at least a few snowbank myxos can be collected. One collection of a single species was made in the Smokies in1939, and during early May of both 1999 and 2000, a couple of different species turned up in the Snowshoe Ski Resort (elevation 4400 feet) in West Virginia, where they were found along the edge of a small patch of snow that represented all that was left from what had been produced by snow-making equipment during the previous skiing season.

I strongly suspect that in some years, when snowfall is heavy and some accumulated snow lasts longer than usual, a few species of snowbank myxos occur at the very highest elevations in the Smokies. Obviously, the single collection made in 1939 suggests that they occur in the Park. The 1939 collection was made near Newfound Gap, by the way. In mid-April of 1999 and early May of 2000, someone from the ATBI group working on slime molds (Martin Schnittler and me in 1999 and just Schnittler in 2000) were in the Smokies looking, but without success. However, neither year was characterized by late winter snowfalls and there was no snow anywhere at the time we looked. Fruiting bodies of snowbank myxos don't last very long (often no more than 10 days to 2 weeks.)

We’d like volunteers to look for snowbank myxos in the Smokies if the late winter snowfall is heavy enough to allow accumulations of snow to persist at places like Clingmans Dome until at least late April. My guess is that the fruiting period for the group in the Smokies would be during the period of mid-April through the first week of May. Someone living near the Park who could check on snow conditions (i.e., are there any accumulations of snow left?) during this time period would be in an ideal position to look for snowbank myxos.

View images of snowbank myxomycetes.

Safety Concerns, Snowbank myxomycetes:

• Additional precautions must be taken in winter.
  • Hypothermia is a constant danger, so clothing appropriate for current and unexpected weather conditions must be with you.
  • Good hiking boots (preferably waterproof), crampons, survival gear, including fire starters, dry socks, gloves, and an emergency blanket are recommended.
  • Be prepared to encounter ice driving to and from sample sites, and on trails in the High Country.
  • Check current Park road conditions before starting out! Call 865-436-1200 and follow menu instructions.
  • Winter slime molds are only to be found where there is long-lasting snow fields, and these are limited to the highest elevations in the Park.