Didymium wildpretii is a species of slime mold which feeds on the decaying remains of various species of cacti

Cacti

-See also:* RRDtool The underlying software upon which Cacti is built* MRTG The original Multi Router Traffic Grapher from which RRDtool was "extracted".* Munin -External links:******...

. It was first described in 2007 and has been found across Mexico

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 and the Canary Islands

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

, but may be present where other cacti grow. Its sporocarps are short (0.1–0.7 mm tall); their sporotheca is pale yellow with an orange stalk and their spore

Spore

In biology, a spore is a reproductive structure that is adapted for dispersal and surviving for extended periods of time in unfavorable conditions. Spores form part of the life cycles of many bacteria, plants, algae, fungi and some protozoa. According to scientist Dr...

s have a diameter of 7.5 μm. When grown on agar, it completes its life cycle in 28–56 days. It grows on basic media with a pH

PH

In chemistry, pH is a measure of the acidity or basicity of an aqueous solution. Pure water is said to be neutral, with a pH close to 7.0 at . Solutions with a pH less than 7 are said to be acidic and solutions with a pH greater than 7 are basic or alkaline...

 of 7.8–10.0, with optimum growth occurring at at 8.5–9.4. The species was named after Wolfredo Wildpret de la Torre, an expert in the flora

Flora

Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animals is fauna.-Etymology:...

 of the Canary Islands.

Hosts

D. wildpretii is known to grow on species of the globose cacti Echinocactus platyacanthus

Echinocactus platyacanthus

Echinocactus platyacanthus is a species of cactus . It is native to central Mexico. This species may grow to be the most massive of all barrel cacti.-Gallery:...

, Mammillaria carnea and Ferocactus latispinus

Ferocactus latispinus

Ferocactus latispinus is a species of barrel cactus native to Mexico. Originally described as Cactus latispinus in 1824 by English naturalist Adrian Hardy Haworth, it gained its current name in 1922 with the erection of the genus Ferocactus by American botanists Britton and Rose. The species name...

; the opuntioid cacti Opuntia depressa, O. maxima, O. pilifera and O. tomentosa) and the columnar cacti (Myrtillocactus geometrizans

Myrtillocactus geometrizans

Myrtillocactus geometrizans is a species of cactus in the genus Myrtillocactus, native to central and northern Mexico.-Description:...

, , Pachycereus hollianus, P. weberi, Stenocereus

Stenocereus

Stenocereus is a genus of columnar or tree-like cacti from the Baja California Peninsula and other parts of Mexico, Arizona in the United States, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Venezuela and the ABC islands of the Dutch Caribbean. The genus has been enlarged by the addition of species from several other...

and Neobuxbaumia

Neobuxbaumia

Neobuxbaumia is a genus of cacti.-Synonymy:The genera Pseudomitrocereus Bravo & Buxb. and Rooksbya Backeb. have been brought into synonymy with this genus....

.