Slime Molds Show Us The Perks Of Being A Loner

Complex coordinated behaviors are a common sight in nature. Fish school, locusts swarm, wildebeests gather yearly for the world’s largest migration, and bamboo plants have mass blooming events.

But where there’s a crowd, there are usually a few individuals that hang back — they’re known as loners. Researchers have tended to dismiss these outliers as mistakes, but a new study reveals that for amoebas that normally come together to form slime molds, being a loner is actually heritable.

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