Which Species of Mold is Most Successful in Transplanting Itself into a New Environment

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Which Species of Mold is Most Successful in
Transplanting Itself into a New Environment

• By Beau Levering

and Taylor Yates
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Introduction
Mold is a eukaryotic type of fungi. It uses
spores as a means of reproduction. These spores
are extremely resilient. Once landing on a
suitable environment, it plants itself and begins
to feed and grow off of its host. Some types of
Fungi included yeast, mold, and mushrooms.
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Our Experiment

• Rationale We are learning about mold growth
• Purpose We are trying to find out which species
  of mold will be most successful in transplanting
  themselves from one environment to the next.
• Goal We hope to successfully transplant
  different species of mold from cheese, tomato
  sauce, bread, and cottage cheese into a different
  food medium

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Experimental Design

• IV Type of mold

DV Amount of mold growth on new environment
Constants medium spaghetti sauce daily
watering
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Process

• We will grow mold on 4 different foods cottage
  cheese, tomato sauce, cheese, and bread. After
  enough mold growth has occurred, we will
  transplant as many types of mold into a plastic
  container next to tomato sauce. We will then
  allow the mold time to spread from its original
  food onto the tomato sauce.

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Types of Foods We Grow Our Molds On (Before
Growth)

• Tomato sauce

Cottage Cheese
Cheese
Bread
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Food with Mold Growth

• Tomato Sauce

Cottage Cheese
Cheese
Bread
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Analysis of Growth
Tomato Sauce Variation of molds, but barely.
Penicilum has almost entirely overrun the tray.
To put this in perspective, when water is placed
on the tray, its simply runs off the
Penicilium. Cottage Cheese Penicillium growth
exclusively. Dutch Cheese No mold
growth. Bread Light Penicillium growth.
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Results
We Identified 2 types of mold Penicillium and
Aspergillus. This is the growth after four days
after transplant.
Aspergillus
Penicillium
As you can see, there is Penicillium in our
Aspergillus tray, partially this is due to lack
of a method for sterile technique. However, the
Penicillium had overrun almost all of the other
molds in the sample we collected from (spaghetti
sauce), which is why Aspergillus is the only
other mold we have.
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Analysis of Transplants(conclusion)
Aspergillus Quickly grows, but fragile. Cannot
survive when competing with Penicillium for
space. Penicillium Grows slower than
Aspergillus, but when it begins to produce
spores, will easily take over a habitat with 1-3
days.