Help with worm thingy (1 Viewer)

This photo has been driving me crazy since I saw it on another forum. To me it looks like a flat worm, but I can not seem to get a Id that I am happy with. It looks as though it has been feeding on the remains of a toad and was taken some where in Italy. Any help would be gratefully received.

Mark

The toad remains aren't toad remains, but a species of fungi in the Myxomycetes group (slime moulds). The white wormy things are probably a form of fungi too. They could also be associated with the Myxomycetes or even a stage of its life cycle.

Slime moulds are interesting things, although not particularly pleasant. They can move to new locations under their own power. Here's a Wikipedia article about slime moulds

Wildwood said:

The toad remains aren't toad remains, but a species of fungi in the Myxomycetes group (slime moulds). The white wormy things are probably a form of fungi too. They could also be associated with the Myxomycetes or even a stage of its life cycle.

Click to expand...

Don't claim to know much about slime moulds, but the clumps of black dots that can be seen in second pic do look suspiciously like nuclei from toad or frog spawn. Also, there is something that looks like it could be a dead toad/frog in amongst one of the clumps (bottom right).

In a previous house we had a pond that used to sustain huge numbers of frog and toad tadpoles (fed them fishfood pellets when they'd disposed of all the algae, they grew huge on it!). Come spring we'd be invaded be returning adults, and our neighbour's garden would be dotted with clumps of spawn where adult females couldn't get through the fence and would simply lay where they were. The jelly quickly dried-up (wasn't much anyway, as it needs water to expand to full size), leaving clumps of nuclei that looked exactly like those in pic.

As for the white jobby, agree that it looks like some type of fungus/mould - but no idea which.

Gary

The dead toad/frog shape also takes on the form of the leaf the fungi is growing on! They’ll grow on any decomposing material. This species may well be associated with dead leaves.

I have pictures in books but images are hard to come by on the web. The closest being Chaetosphaerella phaeostroma (an Ascomycetes) which grows on dead wood: http://www.soortenbank.nl/soorten.p...enuentry=soorten&selected=beschrijving&id=304 . It follows a species that grows on leaves will be more broken up into smaller patches.

The white fungi remind me a little of Bog Beacons - Mitrula paludosa. Maybe a collapsed stage, but without the orange heads? Or a similar species? Hard to say.

No wonder I was having so much trouble sorting out what the hell they were
:h?:

Thanks a lot
Mark