Photographer
Andy Sands
Agency
THOUGH they may resemble something from another planet, these strange, mushroom-like structures are in fact the reproductive phase of Physarum album, a slime mould species that feeds on bacteria on forest floors.
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Perched on top of each 鈥渟tem鈥� is the slime mould鈥檚 fruiting body, containing thousands of spores that burst and release their contents when the mould is ready to reproduce. Intricate though these structures are, most are only a few millimetres high. This makes them 鈥減ainstakingly difficult to find鈥�, says photographer Andy Sands from Hertfordshire in the UK, who took this shot.
Slime moulds start out as single cells and can remain in this form all their lives if enough food is available. However, when supplies are scarce, hundreds of thousands of individuals can merge into a single, moving mass in the search for food.
Fossils indicate that such organisms have existed almost unchanged for some 100 million years, possibly because slime moulds possess a remarkable memory and problem-solving skills. They are so good at working out the most efficient routes to food that researchers have looked to them when designing transport networks.
