Slime Molds and the Dynamics of Tropical Ecosystems

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. — Carlos Rojas, a doctoral student at the University of Arkansas, plans to travel to the Madre de Dios watershed, located between Manu National Park in Peru and the Madidi National Park in Bolivia, two of the world’s most diverse ecological rainforest areas, to study microbes and slime molds. He will make field trips to Peru and to Bolivia in 2007, his travel supported by a $4,000 grant from the Amazon Conservation Association, a nonprofit group that supports research leading to sustainable management and rational use policies for the Amazon Basin.

Slime molds are neither plants nor animals, but have characteristics of both. They fascinate professional and amateur scientists alike.

Rojas has been studying under Steve Stephenson, who along with Fred Spiegel and nearly 100 colleagues around the world, have been conducting the Eumycetozoan Project, an effort to compile a global inventory of slime molds. In 2004, Stephenson and Spiegel, professors in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, won a $2.075 million grant from the National Science Foundation to support their work.

The researchers have focused their efforts on diversity and distribution patterns. Rojas plans to investigate the ecological role that slime molds play in the dynamics of various ecosystems. His project is titled "What can the ecology of eumycetozoans tell us about tropical ecosystem dynamics?”

“My idea is to study tropical ecosystems from a bottom-up perspective rather than the typical top-down approach,” said Rojas. “By examining the kinds of environments certain slime molds prefer in tropical forests, we will have a better understanding of their normal preferences in a primary forest. That knowledge can help us determine if they change their choices to adapt to disturbances caused by people, or simply disappear and become extinct.”

The ultimate idea, he said, is to examine the possibility of using slime molds as indicators of disturbance and pollution. In theory, they should respond differently to contrasting environments, and those differences could be determined through evaluating the conditions under which they grow.

His project extends the study area of the larger research group, from Mexico, Guatemala and Costa Rica to Peru and Bolivia.