# Insect (?) egg ID



## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

Found these in my leuc viv. Typical dart viv conditions, set up ~1 year, no detected pests to date. 

Ideas?


----------



## Broseph (Dec 5, 2011)

My money is on slime mold fruiting bodies. They can take some really cool forms.


----------



## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

It trippy how 'composed' they are to our eye but i suppose all mycology is, its just these things have that familiar-to-another-thing gestalt. Which is so cool.


----------



## Chris S (Apr 12, 2016)

Pretty cool looking.


----------



## Schledog (Apr 28, 2020)

Pretty sure it's a fungus. I had the same thing on a P. grobyi I got from vivariums in the mist. I knocked it off with a q tip. The orchid died back although it's possible I just suck at mini orchid care and that's why it died. Different question-what is the plant next to the Philo. burle marx fantasy?


----------



## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

Ah, yes they dislodge pretty easily with a Q-tip. I would have perhaps thought of a fungus if this were in some dank corner, but this is growing about 4" from the top of the viv near the screened section. Thanks for all the input. 

The other plant is _Rhipsalis ewaldiana, _an epiphytic rainforest cactus. The spines are soft, and it seems to grow pretty well, if a little gangly.


----------



## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

Its crazy, What does want??

lol with a knit brow


----------



## kimcmich (Jan 17, 2016)

Greetings,

Definitely a slime mold (though _not _a fungus). It likely fed on the wet surface after a misting and sporulated as the surface dried. I was lucky enough to have a few in my viv but haven't seem them active in a while. They are surface/biofilm feeders and do not normally harm the plants they grow on - though they may be attracted to plant surfaces that are being attacked by _other _surface-feeding pathogens that can harm plants.


----------



## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

kimcmich said:


> Definitely a slime mold (though _not _a fungus).


Oh, OK, thanks.

Wait...what? 

_Hits Wikipedia_

"In more strict terms, slime molds comprise the mycetozoan group of the amoebozoa. Mycetozoa include the following three groups:

Myxogastria or myxomycetes: syncytial, plasmodial, or acellular slime molds
Dictyosteliida or dictyostelids: cellular slime molds
Protosteloids: amoeboid slime-molds that form fruiting bodies"
They're amoebae? Neat!


----------



## Louis (Apr 23, 2014)

Socratic Monologue said:


> They're amoebae? Neat!


The neatest.
slime mold intelligence



> A 2012 study revealed that slime mold can solve mazes and appears to learn new things about its environment. When food is placed at the end, slime mold locates the food by exploring every part of the maze. The slime mold will find the shortest path to the food and retract all paths that don’t lead to these points, leaving behind a trail of slime that chemically signals a dead end, according to The Well, the news platform of the University of Chicago’s Marine Biological Laboratory.
> 
> 
> Astoundingly, slime mold fairly accurately mapped a portion of the Japanese rail system, according to a January 2010 paper published in Science. In the experiment, researchers from Japan and England placed oat flakes in a pattern similar to the way outlying cities are distributed around Tokyo and allowed the slime mold to roam. The research team believes that a new model of the rail system based on the slime mold’s behavior may be more efficient and adaptable.
> ...


----------



## Socratic Monologue (Apr 7, 2018)

Well, that might explain the patterns I found on the glass this morning:


----------



## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

That, or we maybe about to be invaded.


----------



## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

Yeah huh we probably have alien life all wrong. 

Was that thing all by itself on the glass, Mark?


----------



## Encyclia (Aug 23, 2013)

It's a screen shot from the movie Arrival


----------



## Kmc (Jul 26, 2019)

We should have a Rorschach Mold game thread.


----------

