slime mold
nounDefinition of slime mold
: any of a group (such as Myxomycetes) of organisms formerly held to be lower fungi but now often considered protists that exist vegetatively in usually moist habitats as mobile plasmodia and reproduce by spores
Examples of slime mold in a Sentence
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Other collective organisms such as slime molds must contend with evolutionary pressures both on the whole and on individuals. — Quanta Magazine, "A Mathematician Who Decodes the Patterns Stamped Out by Life," 20 Dec. 2017 There is no reason to think that bacteria, slime molds and similar single-cell forms of life have awareness, understanding or other capacities implicit in real intellect. — Quanta Magazine, "Seeing the Beautiful Intelligence of Microbes," 13 Nov. 2017 The slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum can exist as individual cells that eat bacteria in the soil. — Ashley Strickland, CNN, "The weird Upside Down science behind 'Stranger Things'," 4 July 2019 The slime mold grew into a looped network resembling Tokyo’s efficient railway system. — Quanta Magazine, "In Natural Networks, Strength in Loops," 14 Aug. 2013 Specifically, the Physarum polycephalum slime mold. — Avery Thompson, Popular Mechanics, "A Single Cell Hints at a Solution to the Biggest Problem in Computer Science," 27 Dec. 2018 These skills let slime molds do impressively well at some human tasks. — Michael Greshko, National Geographic, "Brainless Creatures Can Do Some Incredibly Smart Things," 21 May 2018 Scientists have shown that slime molds also exhibit rudimentary learning behavior. — Eoin O'carroll, The Christian Science Monitor, "What slime molds can teach us about thinking," 12 Apr. 2018 Some scientists suggest that slime mold behavior may even shed light on the origins of intelligence. — Eoin O'carroll, The Christian Science Monitor, "What slime molds can teach us about thinking," 12 Apr. 2018These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'slime mold.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.
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