Myxogastria - History of Research

History of Research

Because of their unprepossessing nature, the Myxogastriae were for a long time not well researched. Thomas Panckow first named the mould Lycogala epidendrum as "Fungus cito crescentes" in his 1654 book Herbarium Portatile, oder behendes Kräuter- und Gewächsbuch. In 1729, Pier Antonio Micheli thought that fungi are different from moulds, and Heinrich Friedrich Link agreed with this theory in 1833. Elias Magnus Fries documentated the plasmodial stage in 1829, and 35 years later Anton de Bary observed the germination of the spores. De Bary also discovered the cyclosis in the cell for the movement, he saw them as animal-like creatures and reclassified them as Mycetozoa, which literally translates "Fungus animals". This theory dominated until the second half of the 20th century.

From 1874 to 1876, Jósef Tomasz Rostafinski, a pupil of De Barys, published the first extensive monography of the group. Three monographs by Arthur Lister and Guilielma Lister were published in 1894, 1911 and 1925. These were groundbreaking works about the Myxogastria, as was the 1934 book The Myxomycetes by Thomas H. Macbride and George Willard Martin. Important works in the late 20th century were the 1969 monographs by George Willard Martin and Constantine John Alexopoulos, and the 1975 monograph by Lindsay Shepherd Olive. The first is perhaps the most notable, as with it "the modern era of the taxonomy of the Myxogastria began". Other notable researchers were Persoon, Rostafinski, Lister, Macbridge, and Martin and Alexopoulos, who discovered and classified many species.