A sorocarp (from the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
word ''soros'' "a heap" + ''karpos'' "fruit") is the fruiting body characteristic of certain
cellular slime moulds
Slime mold or slime mould is an informal name given to several kinds of unrelated eukaryotic organisms with a life cycle that includes a free-living single-celled stage and the formation of spores. Spores are often produced in macroscopic mu ...
(e.g.,
Dictyosteliida). Each sorocarp consists of both a sorophore (stalk) and a
sorus
A sorus (pl. sori) is a cluster of sporangia (structures producing and containing spores) in ferns and fungi. A coenosorus (plural coenosori) is a compound sorus composed of multiple, fused sori.
Etymology
This New Latin word is from Ancient Gr ...
.
[Lawrence, E. 2005. Henderson's Dictionary of Biology, 13th Ed. Prentice Hall, London] Sorocarps release
spore
In biology, a spore is a unit of sexual or asexual reproduction that may be adapted for dispersal and for survival, often for extended periods of time, in unfavourable conditions. Spores form part of the life cycles of many plants, algae, ...
s.
References
Mycetozoa
{{microbiology-stub