Lockdown science project: identifying Holly's homegrown mould

Posted on July 10, 2020   by Kimberley Ndungu

In May, nine-year-old Holly shared with us her impressive lockdown science project, which included four homegrown fungi colonies. In this blog post, we will be going through some responses to Holly’s colonies.
 

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Holly set about using scientific methods to identify each colony, using some of the Microbiology Society's resources on colony morphology.

 We took Holly’s pictures to twitter to see what our followers thought.

 Pythium insidiosum is a oomcyete (water mould), which looks very similar to the mold in Holly’s first colony and is often found in standing water or occasionally in wet areas of soil with dense vegetation.

 With the guidance of Holly’s morphology descriptions, Sam suggested the second colony could be Aspergillus nidulans.

Conidiobolus coronatus is an inhabitant of soil and can be found on leaves, and similar to Holly’s description it has a fine, powdery, white surface.

A dark walled mould that can be found in the air, on dry walls and carpets, Chaetomium is a common household fungus.

We are extremely impressed with Holly’s four colonies and presentation for her lockdown science project – full pictures and descriptions can be found on the previous blog post.

 Well done Holly!

 

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Microbiology News