 In the summer of 2005, Carlos Lado hosted a workshop concerning the isolation and culturing of eumycetozoans (true slime molds) at the Royal Botanic Garden CSIC, in Madrid. Thirteen participants representing 11 countries ( England, France, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Scotland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine) attended the workshop which was taught by Dr. Fred Spiegel, Dr. Jim Cavendar and Dr. Ed Haskins, with the assistance of Maria Romalero and John Shadwick. The workshop could not have taken place with out the contributions of Diana Wrigley de Basanta, who organized the use of facilities, made sure we all had a place to sleep, and cheerfully translated for those of us who have not yet learned Spanish.
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The workshop took place in a new building in the botanical garden itself. Microscopes were made by Nikon and kindly donated by IZASA of Spain for use during the workshop. We spent seven days in the gardens either in the classroom working at the scopes or out in the garden collecting substrates for the isolation of slime molds. Ed Haskins took us through the culturing of myxomycetes, Jim Cavender covered more advanced techniques for identifying and culturing dictyostelids, and Fred Spiegel did the same for protostelids. John Shadwick gave a demonstration of the use of CombineZ software for z-stacking of photomicrographs. By the end of the workshop students were identifying and culturing organisms from all three groups, so we considered this workshop a great success.