Bacteria for boys

“The Pictorial Encylopedia of Plants and Flowers” by F A Novak is an originally Czech work. It has been translated to several foreign languages, including Swedish. As a kid, I and my best friend sneaked into the local library in secret to leaf through it. We had gotten into our tiny little heads that plants and flowers were somehow “girlie” and hence uncool for boys. Ha ha ha.

Actually, this huge volume contains a lot of cool stuff for boys, too: bacteria, cyanobacteria, algae, fungi, lichens and ferns. Plants? Flowers? But sure, most of the cyclopaedia does contain photos of flowery plants, unfortunately mostly in black-and-white. The editor did use the few colour plates relatively wisely. They feature orchids, the golden crocus, the poinsettia and…the fly agaric mushroom. More original is the inclusion of a colour photo of a…pineapple.

Not sure how to rate this somewhat strange product, which contains more illustrations than text (and hence information). Could work as a leaf-through volume on your book shelf (or the waiting room of a dentist?), but otherwise I say its use is limited and popularity somehow mysterious…

Social slime

“The Social Amoebae” is a rather narrow book. It seems to be the only reasonably popularized book on cellular slime molds, a group of amoebae-like organisms difficult to classify. Indeed, the author doesn't even try! A somewhat different group of creatures, the plasmodial or “regular” slime molds, are covered in another book, “Myxomycetes: A Handbook of Slime Molds” by two different authors. If you are some kind of super-nerd with an obsession for, ahem, slime, then I think both books are must-haves. If not, you will probably wonder what on earth all the fuzz is about (or where all the slime comes from).

The author of “The Social Amoebae”, John Tyler Bonner, is an elderly gentleman who has studied cellular slime molds since the 1930's. He is particularly fascinated by their life cycle, which is indeed peculiar. An amoeba-like creature starts to divide, whereupon it and its descendants combine to form a slug, a kind of colony which acts as if it was a single organism. Despite being “primitive”, the slug can orient itself towards light and detect minute differences in temperature and gas levels. If underground, this helps the slug to reach the surface. There, another startling transformation takes place, with some of the cells forming a stalk, while others turn into spores. The stalk-forming cells eventually die and hence sacrifice themselves in favor of the spores, which spread by latching onto invertebrate animals.

Since each cell in the “slime mold” is really a separate amoeba, this altruistic self-immolation is curious from a Darwinist perspective. The author's explanation is that the slug functions like a colony of social insects, where the worker caste sacrifices itself in favor of the queen, since they are family genetically speaking. In the same way, slugs usually consist of descendants of a founding amoeba. Indeed, the founder cell acts as the “queen” of the colony, secreting certain chemicals to attract its descendants. Sometimes, slugs are invaded by alien amoebae, which are genetically different, and hence act as parasites or “cheaters”. The parasite can trick the host to create stalks, while it produces the spores!

While this is no doubt fascinating, I admit that Bonner's book became increasingly less interesting as I read on. I stopped reading it about half-way through. However, since this quintessential “nerd book” seems to be the only widely available work on these critters, I have nevertheless decided to give it four stars. But, as I already explained, you probably shouldn't even try reading it unless your first love in life are social amoebae climbing the slimier parts of Mount Improbable…

The Blob in real life

A review of "Myxomycetes: A Handbook of Slime Molds".

Did you know that the classic horror movie "The Blob" is freely based on a true story?

Well, *very* freely...

Slime molds are a curious and often overlooked group of organisms, defying all attempts at classification. Are they fungi? Are they animals? Or something else entirely? Currently, most slime molds are believed to be related to amoebae. But then, what on earth is an amoeba? Previously classified as animals, they are now an independent "kingdom".

Slime molds have a complicated life cycle. Their most notorious phase is the plasmodium, actually a multinucleate cell. The plasmodium is bloblike, slimy and can become quite large (the size, say, of a mushroom). Also, it can move around. Often, the plasmodia are brightly coloured as well. This created quite a panic in a suburb of Dallas, Texas in 1973. The yellow plasmodia of the slime mold species Fuligo septica suddenly appeared on people's lawns, and when blasted with water, broke apart - with the parts continuing to slowly creep around, even getting somewhat bigger! Naturally, people panicked and assumed UFOs had something to do with it. Or had they just been watching "The Blob" too much? Eventually, the plasmodium settles down and becomes a fruiting body with spores. It's this strange life cycle, combining an amoeba-like stage and a fungus-like stage, which has long baffled researchers.

"Myxomycetes" is a good introduction to these organisms. The book is intended as a field guide to 175 species of slime molds found in eastern North America, but since most species are cosmopolitan, the book can probably be used in Europe as well. It should be noted that all illustrations are in black and white. Many of these creatures are extremely small, and found only in decaying wood or litter. Still, it's a pity that no colour plates of the more dramatic species have been included (such as the previously mentioned Fuligo septica).

Apart from the species presentations, "Myxomycetes" contain chapters on how to collect and study slime molds, their geographical distribution, and their ecology. There is also a reference section.

Apparently, slime molds prefer the temperate region, being less abundant in the tropics. They can be found in deserts and in the hills, but they prefer woods where they grow on bark, litter or dung. Some insects have specialized in attacking slime molds, including the slime mold beetles and the slime mold fly (which, however, may help them spread the spores). In the Mexican state of Veracruz, some of the natives actually eat our old friend Fuligo septica! They call it "moon feces", while the preferred English term is "dog vomit".

Personally, I just call it The Blob...

Finally, a word of warning. This is a typical book for nerds. If you don't already have a strong interest in slime molds, fungi or perhaps amoebae, I don't think you will appreciate it. Buy a more popularized book on mushrooms first! However, if you are one of those nature-lovers who just love to poke around in the litter, or look under the bark of trees, "Myxomycetes" might come in handy.

Neo-Haeckelian protistology

"Handbook of Protoctista" is an extensive, scientific reference work on micro-organisms. Lynn Margulis is one of the editors. The subtitle is rather extensive: "The structure, cultivation, habitats and life histories of the Eukaryotic microorganisms and their descendants exclusive of animals, plants and fungi. A guide to the algae, ciliates, foraminifera, sporozoa, water moulds, slime moulds and the other protoctists".

Why even write a review, with this presentation?

The following statement from the introduction by Lewis Thomas is also worth quoting: "Just a few years back, this book would have seemed to most readers trained in either medicine or biology nothing more than an arcane compendium of nature's most outlandish oddities, queer single cells of primary interest only to the most specialized of specialists". Well, at least he's honest! I suppose doing research on chimpanzees or mountain gorillas is better for your pay check, too. What turned the scientific community to a more pro-protoctistan position isn't entirely clear, but it sounds as if evolutionary theory has something to do with it. Today, Protoctista are regarded as our distant parents. Amen and amen?

When this book was published, about 100,000 species of protoctists were known to science. As behoves a micro-organism, they can be encountered pretty much anywhere. When studying the hypertrophied intestines of an East African rhinoceros, W. Van Hoven discovered a new world of symbiotic eukaryotes using scanning electron microscopy. Meanwhile, a wood-ingesting termite may contain as many as thirty different protist species. No surprise there.

The editors of "Handbook of Protoctista" don't consider their objects of study to be single-celled plants or animals, "anymore than humans are shell-less multicellular amebas". An ironic statement, given the claim that protoctists are our parents. Be that as it may, Lynn Margulis and her colleagues wanted to establish the Protoctista not only as an independent field of study, but also as a "kingdom" in its own right, alongside the "kingdoms" of animals, plants and fungi. They also reject classification schemes of algae based on colour. No more talk about red or green algae, please! At one point, the authors call their approach Neo-Haeckelian protistology.

The rest of the book is an extravagant super-encyclopaedia. The entries are divided into sections dealing with Habitat and Ecology, Characterization and Recognition, Maintenance and Cultivation, Evolutionary History and References. There is also an extensive glossary. The text is heavy, but "Handbook of Protoctista" is probably a must for advanced students who want to walk in the footsteps of Margulis.