When threatened with starvation, slime molds aggregate into towers topped with slimy spheres that stick to passing insects, which carry the spores out into the world. But new research shows that up to a third of slime mold amobae are “loners” that hang back from assembling into one of these swaying towers. Those loners serve an ecological purpose, says a team of Princeton scientists led by Corina Tarnita: when most of a community is rushing in one direction, the few who hang back may protect the whole population.
Photo by Usman Bashir, Washington University in St. Louis
Loners help society survive, say Princeton ecologists
Liz Fuller-Wright, Office of Communications March 27, 2020
It isn’t easy being a loner — someone who resists the pull of the crowd, who marches to their own drummer.
But loners exist across the natural world, and they might just serve a purpose, said Corina Tarnita, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology. She ticked off examples of loners who sit out their species’ collective actions: the small herd that skips the great wildebeest migration, the locusts that peel off from the swarm and revert to calm grasshopper behaviors, the handful of bamboo that flower a few days before or after the rest of the species, and the slime molds that hang back from forming the swaying towers studied by Princeton luminary John Bonner.
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