 Carl Linnaeus called it "Mucor septicus" in his 1763 "Species Plantarum".The species was transferred to the genus "Fuligo" by German botanist Friedrich Heinrich Wiggers in 1780.Like many slime molds, the cells of this species typically aggregate to form a plasmodium, a multinucleate mass of undifferentiated cells that may move in an ameboid-like fashion during the search for nutrients.