NO RESPECT.(The Talk of the Town)(National Science Foundation funds project to catalogue hundreds of currently unknown slime-mold species)

Publication: The New Yorker

Publication Date: 03-NOV-03

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COPYRIGHT 2003 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Even the most devoted slime-mold enthusiasts would probably concede that the professional study of slime molds--more formally known as Eumycetozoans--has some unique drawbacks. For starters, you must weather polite condescension from the smug arachnid people and from the lording beetle crowd, not to mention the bio-tech and genomics types who hog all the press and the funding. In the trade, your subject is considered a "non-charismatic species" (as opposed to charismatic organisms like koala bears and petunias). You spend weeks camping out in a wet tent, tromping through forests with a magnifying glass, poring over rotting stumps and logs. The worst insult of all, though--in defiance of Linnaean logic--may be that you always...

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