In article ,
Gary G see.signature@bottom wrote:
I found an usual clump in an outside corner of a door and figured that
it was another wasp nest. Nope. It was fiber-like and very black
inside, of powder consistency. I figure that it is a fungus. The
"spores" look like pollen but differ in the protrusions that one would
see on white blood cells. The following are links to images of this
stuff. Anyone have a clue to what this is?

I wonder if it could be the sporangium (probably not the current
correct technical term) of a true slime mold, perhaps Fuligo septica,
which produces a crumbly lump, rather than the forest of tiny sporangia
most other Myxomycetes do.

Myxomycetes used to be in the Kingdom Fungi (Myxomycetales) but some
time ago they got thrown out and are now in the Protista like a number
of other strange organisms of uncertain affinity. They certainly have
as much claim to be protozoans as fungi, but not both!

These organisms live on bacteria and are often found in dead organic
matter, like compost heaps and rich soil. Most are small and not very
visible, but some can grow into a network of bright colored strands a
meter or more in diameter. Since they are motile, it's quite
surprising to most people to go out in their garden in the morning and
find it festooned with bright yellow gooey strings of a slime mold
plasmodium that has crawled out of the mulch overnight, getting ready
to sporulate.

You could try "hatching" some spores by moistening them. If they are
myxomycetes, you may get a population of the haploid stage which look
like flagellates or amoebae, depending on the moisture level. These
bogus protozoa multiply by division, but eventually some may fuse to
form the net-like diploid plasmodial stage, which can grow large and
eventually forms the structure you may have found.

I may be leading you astray here, a bit, since I'm not familiar with
the details of F.septica's life cycle, but the above describes the
cycle of some other species. I used do work on the genetics of
myxomycetes.

AFAIK, there is no mycology group.

There's a bionet.mycology.

See if you can find an image on the net of F.septica's fruiting body,
whatever it's called these days. Let us know what you find out.