Secretive Slime Moulds: Myxomycetes of Australia

Neither plants, nor animals, nor fungi, the myxomycetes are a surprisingly diverse and fascinating group of organisms. They spend the majority of their life out of sight as single-celled amoeboid individuals in leaf litter, soil or decaying wood, foraging for bacteria and other simple life forms. However, when conditions are right, two individual cells come together to give rise to a much larger, creeping structure called a plasmodium, which produces even more complex and often beautiful fr...