It's one of my favorite slime molds

A traditional Nahuatl preparation of this type of slime mold, from Rodríguez-Palma et al, 2017: http://dx.doi.org/10.24966/FSN-1076/100025

This specimen is edible. It is slightly more mature than the OP photo but still goopy. It is still a single very large amoeba cell.

This specimen is fully mature and no longer edible: it is dry & dusty inside. It is no longer one amoeba cell: the nuclei have become individual walled spores.

This specimen is fully mature and no longer edible: it is dry & dusty inside

This is Reticularia lycoperdon, also known as false puffball, silver hand, and caca de luna. It is edible and apparently quite tasty, although the specimen in this photo may be too immature enough to eat

I think it would be interesting to document & compare microtubule structures across all protists, not just in spindles and MTOCs but in pseudopods & other interphase cell extensions!

Do you think ExM will eventually make it possible for home enthusiasts to investigate this kind of thing?

this is a banger

Considering the microtubule split in eukaryotes, I really want to know more about the cytoskeleton in these cell extensions

This is a single individual cell

The baby slime molds are inside, actually, because this slime mold is pregnant

What the fuck is this

Oh hell yeah that looks cribrariid

Slime molds don't really colonize anything. They are mobile, have a relatively short life cycle, and generally do not stay in one spot very long at all. It probably makes more sense to think of them as short lived animals that move very slowly

Also the slime mold in the photo is not feeding. It is fruiting, an irreversible process that occurs after feeding is finished

No, it doesn't decompose anything. Slime molds are mobile predators like animals and they eat live prey, mostly bacteria

Fungi is not able to travel or remodel its network in the way slime molds do, so it cannot solve the same kinds of problems

Slime molds don't really "infest," and they aren't fungi. They eat woodrot bacteria and generally have pretty short life cycles

If you have a slime mold and it's not in an aquarium or a potted plant, your house is almost certainly rotting. They eat woodrot bacteria and don't stick around very long after it's gone. I guess being poor is pretty punk though

The fungus looks like jasper

Yes I understand

Amoebozoan slime molds are actually more unique than fungi, as convergent examples of the latter strategy can be found in bacteria, kelp, and even basal to animals. Amoebozoa, on the other hand, is the only place where acellular macroscopic fruiting evolved

Slime molds belong to the Amoebozoan kingdom, one of the two major groups of amoebas (many amoebas are not related to each other)

Some other common names for this species are ...

Caca de Luna (poop of the moon)
False Puffball
Silver Hand

... and its latin name (Reticularia) lycoperdon literally means "(netted) wolf fart"

Metatrichia floriformis

from the orange capillitium and shiny black peridium and irregular dehiscence

It is

This is indeed Fuligo septica

This is probably slime flux and it can be pretty toxic

from Moreno et al., 2021: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354969716_TWO_NEW_CORTICOLOUS_MYXOMYCETE_SPECIES_FROM_SPAIN

from Moreno et al., 2021: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354969716_TWO_NEW_CORTICOLOUS_MYXOMYCETE_SPECIES_FROM_SPAIN

from Moreno et al., 2021: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354969716_TWO_NEW_CORTICOLOUS_MYXOMYCETE_SPECIES_FROM_SPAIN

from Moreno et al., 2021: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354969716_TWO_NEW_CORTICOLOUS_MYXOMYCETE_SPECIES_FROM_SPAIN

Badhamia crassipella

Noice

Maybe it's too wet in the jungle to just lay on the ground

Ceratiomyxa sphaerosperma by Bruce Welkovich

Ceratiomyxa morchella by Chris McSpadden

There are two tropical species with thick stalks, and there are probably more unnamed species within C fruticulosa

Gallery - Myxotropic Image gallery of Myxomycetes ordered by genera and species. All the images have been made, through optical microscopes, from the samples obtained by the Myxotropic project and through international collaborations.

Yeah it helps to look through books like Les Myxomycètes and galleries like the ones at at www.myxotropic.org/gallery/

You can look for a hypothallus (or hyphae to rule out slime mold) but this is obviously not foolproof

From Poulain, Meyer, Bozonnet, 2011

Do you see any stalks