Queen of slime moulds

Being dubbed “the queen of slime moulds” might seem a dubious accolade, but Gulielma Lister (1860–1949) was the world expert on these extraordinary organisms that are now at the cutting edge of research into artificial intelligence – their trial-and-error decision-making processes are informing solutions for networking problems, for example. Not animals, plants nor fungi, slime moulds can creep around to explore their neighbourhood and track down food. One of them is the star attraction at a Paris zoo, where it is nicknamed le blob after the American horror movie. (In a quirk of serendipity, Alfred Hitchcock, the director of numerous other famous American horror films, lived for many years in the same road as Lister.)

We treat the soil beneath our feet as dirt, yet in a single teaspoon, there are more micro-organisms