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

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 end up lumped in with the fungi people.

So when word got out not long ago that two University of Arkansas biology professors had won a multimillion-dollar grant from the National Science Foundation for a project to catalogue hundreds of currently unknown slime-mold species, the worldwide Eumycetozoan community got a little giddy.

Fred Spiegel and Steve Stephenson, the grant winners, were in town the other night, at the Explorers Club, sipping soda and munching on carrots with the other honorees (specialists in catfish, plant bugs, and nightshades). The two men had just flown up from Fayetteville, Arkansas. Stephenson, who is sixty, is tall and deprecating. He has a square jaw and a brushcut, which give him the appearance of an amiable drill sergeant. Spiegel, who is fifty-one, is short and compact and bearded.

"We're congenial people," Fred Spiegel said. "Every couple of years, there's an international slime-mold congress: in England; Madrid; Brussels, Belgium; Beltsville, Maryland. We have a big dinner, we share papers, and there's always at least one day when we all go out in the field together foraging for slime molds. Some of the really big groups, like the group that studies insects, are too large for this kind of camaraderie."

"I got into myxomycetes through the back door--mycology and fungi," Stephenson said. "I have gone to India, Africa, Australia, and New Zealand in search of slime molds. My wife usually comes with me. Slimes are very glorious, but there are a lot of days when it rains and it's very cold and the wind's howling and you still have to go out. My daughter, ...