SERIES. Tarn-et-Garonnais 2022: Anne-Marie Rantet-Poux, curious by nature

Ah, if only they had an easier name, surely myxomycetes would surely occupy the same place of choice as fungi… with which they are often confused. One who failed to confuse them was Anne-Marie Rantet-Poux.
A member of the mycology group of the Tarn-et-Garonne Society of Natural Sciences, Caussade apothecary became a well-known expert on myxomycetes…renamed “blob-trotters” in book 5, published at the beginning of book 5. 2022, dedicated to his minor patrons (1).

He first discovered this “imaginary world” in 2015 on a pile of wood at the bottom of his garden in Monteils.

Myxomycete comes from the ancient Greek word “muxa” which means slimy, slimy, bony and “mykes” fungus. Bone mushroom? Also, the “mixo” chosen arbitrarily by Ann-Marie is not a mushroom… “even if it was said to be a moving mushroom until the last century”.

It moves, eats, and metamorphoses into small fruiting bodies that look like mushrooms that contain spores to reproduce.

“It is neither a plant nor an animal. Slime mold is an amoebozoan (another unpronounceable name, of course!), “a single-celled organism that behaves like a multicellular organism. It moves, eats, and reproduces by metamorphosing into small fruiting bodies called myxocarps, which resemble fungi that contain spores. It was this fascinating and made me want to report it. »

Like “invaders,” slime molds are all around us…and completely harmless. “There are more than 1,000 in the world. Their number is higher in temperate zones than in tropical zones, where the spores cannot dry because the climate is so humid.”

Blob, a plasmodium made famous by Toulouse CNRS and Thomas Pesquet

“Myxo” has two successive lives: in its mobile phase we speak of a plasmodium or “blob”, the stationary phase is myxocarps. The Anglo-Saxon nickname (inspired by the 1958 science fiction film The Blob, in which a sticky substance takes over everything), was used by Audrey Dussutour and her team to designate the plasmodium Physarum polycephalum at the CNRS in Toulouse. , a myxomycete. The “blobs” became famous overnight thanks to astronaut Thomas Pesquet, who took four of them aboard the ISS.

Anne-Marie Rantet-Poux doesn’t raise a ball at home… she has too much respect for these creatures that have existed for 1 billion years.
Growing up in Aveyron, this farmer’s daughter has always had a sensitivity to nature. It is not surprising that he chose the profession of pharmacist (“I started as an assistant in Saint-Nicolas, near Lavit-de-Loman, where my parents bought a farm before settling in Caussade in 1994”) to enrich his knowledge of plants, herbalism, homeopathy … and mushrooms that collectors bring to the pharmacy when they are not sure whether it is edible.

I, like a spider, only take care of the unloved.

In retirement, Anne-Marie naturally joined the “mycology” group of the Natural Sciences Society of Tarn-et-Garonne, also joining ASNAT, in the neighboring department of Tarn. It is enough to expand your horizons and reveal the secret of metamorphoses thanks to “mixo”.

“I, I only care for the unloved,” he said, a heartfelt cry to the spiders, who had another passion.
“I really liked the picture, but I noticed that the plant doesn’t look good until it has a spider or an insect on it. Anne-Marie, a macro expert, has already photographed 150 different spiders, including 101 spiders in her garden in Monteils. “At home I found a rare, spider nicknamed Eresus Collar. It normally lives further south. If it rises here, it is definitely a sign of global warming. »

To those who have epidermal reactions to spiders, Anne-Marie Rantet-Poux explains that they are “afraid of the unknown, spiders have a home use, they are a very good insecticide. Then you can remove the web, but do not put the spider in the vacuum cleaner hose. »