Family Physaridae Order Physarales | Rank Genus Subclass Myxogastria | |
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Species Willkommlangea reticulata Similar Myxogastria, Physarales, Enerthenema, Craterium, Diachea | ||
Willkommlangea reticulata is a slime mold species from the order Physarida and the only species of the genus Willkommlangea. It is common worldwide, but in Europe it is rare. The tropics are possibly the main area of habitat.
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Characteristics
The plasmodium is orange to scarlet. The fruit bodies are mainly plasmodiocarps, which are worm to net-shaped, beige, ochre or yellow to red-brown coloured and red spotted. The strands are occasionally so closely bound together that they produce pseudo-aethaliae, rarely cushion-form fruit bodies, which have a diameter from 0.3 to 0.5 mm (0.012 to 0.020 in) and expand over several centimetres wide. The hypothallus is inconspicuous or is missing.
The sturdy, crossways puckered peridium is macroscopic light ochre to dark red-brown, in transmitted light yellowish to red-brown and covered with whitish or yellow to red-brown chalk, which occasionally produce a consistent crust. It opens irregularly lengthways, the edge, however, continues to permanently stick with the substrate.
The capillitium is composed of a few rotund chalk knots, which are linked through transparent to yellowish strings with acanthoid, non-overgrown humps. The capillitium becomes segmented through white to yellowish, partly perforated limestone plates, which are overgrown on the edge of the peridium. The spores are 8 to 10, rarely 7 to 11 µm and their body is black-brown, in transmitted light purple-brown, on the surface dense and fine-warty.
Habitat
Willkommlangea reticulata are distributed worldwide. It was only occasionally found in Europe. It is believed that the species focuses in the tropics.
Taxonomy
The species was initially known in 1805 as Physarum reticulatum, first named by Johannes Baptista von Albertini and Ludwig David von Schweinitz. In 1891 Carl Ernst Otto Kuntze created for it a separate genus, Willkommlangea.