The slime mold Physarum polycephalum doesn't have a nervous system, yet the single-celled organism is capable of learning and communicating.

Physarum polycephalum can learn to no longer fear a harmless substance that it was previous averse to. The mold can also share knowledge of the substance's harmlessness with its fellow molds.

According to a new study, published this week in the journal Philosophical Transaction of the Royal Society B, the mold learns via fusion.

A team of biologists at the French National Center for Scientific Research determined the molds learn by absorbing the foreign substance. After researchers had the slime molds move across salty environments for six days, the molds contained ten times more salt than molds in a control group.

When researchers placed the salty slime molds back in a salt-free environment, the single-celled organisms expelled the salt within two days -- purging the "memory" of the foreign substance.

In a followup test, scientists injected a salt concentration into molds previously unexposed to salty environs. When placed in a salty environment, the molds behaved just like the molds that had become conditioned to the foreign substance.

Slime molds enter a dormant stage when environmental conditions worsen, but researchers found the dormant molds held onto their memories.

"We showed that information acquired during the training was preserved through the dormant stage as slime molds still showed habituation after a one-month dormancy period," researchers wrote.

Scientists are currently conducting additional experiments to determine whether slime molds can memorize multiple foreign substances at once.

Related Links
Lands Beyond Beyond - extra solar planets - news and science
Life Beyond Earth

Tweet

Thanks for being here; We need your help. The SpaceDaily news network continues to grow but revenues have never been harder to maintain. With the rise of Ad Blockers, and Facebook - our traditional revenue sources via quality network advertising continues to decline. And unlike so many other news sites, we don't have a paywall - with those annoying usernames and passwords. Our news coverage takes time and effort to publish 365 days a year. If you find our news sites informative and useful then please consider becoming a regular supporter or for now make a one off contribution.
SpaceDaily Contributor $5 Billed Once credit card or paypal		SpaceDaily Monthly Supporter $5 Billed Monthly paypal only

Necrophagy: A means of survival in the Dead Sea
Geneva, Switzerland (SPX) Apr 16, 2019
Studying organic matter in sediments helps shed light on the distant past. What was the climate like? What organisms populated the Earth? What conditions did they live in? Researchers from the University of Geneva (UNIGE), Switzerland, and the University of Lyon, France, have examined the sediments in the Dead Sea, where the salinity is without compare, making it one of the most hostile environments on the planet. The geologists drilled a 400-metre hole in the core of the Dead Sea before analysing ... read more