Terminology and Life-Cycles

Abstract

The Myxomycota are organisms which are distributed all over the world. During the vegetative state of their life-cycle, they appear as a diploid, multinucleate amoeboid mass of protoplasm, the plasmodium. Under specific environment conditions, the plasmodium develops into one or several sporocarps of great morphological diversity. Haploid spores are formed externally, or internnaly, e.g., in the Myxogastromycetidae (Fig.1); the majority of them are encysted spores. By germination of an encysted spore, one to for naked myxamoebae (flagellated swarm cells) are produced; they fuse to a diploid zygote. The zygote is, simply speaking, the beginning of a new plasmodium.