Secret Beauty of Freshwater: ‘‘Aquarium Mosses’’

Critical Reviews in Plant Sciences

International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET), 2023

The varied group of terrestrial plants known as bryophytes is tiny in stature but has significant ecological effects. The biggest group of terrestrial plants, excluding flowering plants, they have over 23,000 known species worldwide. Mosses, hornworts, and liverworts are among the three phylogenetically separate lineages that make up the category. Mosses are typically regarded as a "key group" in our comprehension of the phylogenetically relatedness and origin of contemporary land plants (embryophytes). Bryophytes are able to live in a wide range of settings and have various growth habits. Although, mosses exhibit high species diversity, a major limitation in using mosses as study organisms has been the lack of basic floristic, ecological, and alpha-taxonomical knowledge of plants in many regions.

Bryophytes, 2020

Nature Communications, 2014

† Background Molecular phylogeny has resolved the liverworts as the earliest-divergent clade of land plants and mosses as the sister group to hornworts plus tracheophytes, with alternative topologies resolving the hornworts as sister to mosses plus tracheophytes less well supported. The tracheophytes plus fossil plants putatively lacking lignified vascular tissue form the polysporangiophyte clade. † Scope This paper reviews phylogenetic, developmental, anatomical, genetic and paleontological data with the aim of reconstructing the succession of events that shaped major land plant lineages. † Conclusions Fundamental land plant characters primarily evolved in the bryophyte grade, and hence the key to a better understanding of the early evolution of land plants is in bryophytes. The last common ancestor of land plants was probably a leafless axial gametophyte bearing simple unisporangiate sporophytes. Water-conducting tissue, if present, was restricted to the gametophyte and presumably consisted of perforate cells similar to those in the early-divergent bryophytes Haplomitrium and Takakia. Stomata were a sporophyte innovation with the possible ancestral functions of producing a transpiration-driven flow of water and solutes from the parental gametophyte and facilitating spore separation before release. Stomata in mosses, hornworts and polysporangiophytes are viewed as homologous, and hence these three lineages are collectively referred to as the 'stomatophytes'. An indeterminate sporophyte body (the sporophyte shoot) developing from an apical meristem was the key innovation in polysporangiophytes. Poikilohydry is the ancestral condition in land plants; homoiohydry evolved in the sporophyte of polysporangiophytes. Fungal symbiotic associations ancestral to modern arbuscular mycorrhizas evolved in the gametophytic generation before the separation of major present-living lineages. Hydroids are imperforate water-conducting cells specific to advanced mosses. Xylem vascular cells in polysporangiophytes arose either from perforate cells or de novo. Food-conducting cells were a very early innovation in land plant evolution. The inferences presented here await testing by molecular genetics.

Cryptogamie, Bryologie, 2012

The current issue of Phytotaxa is dedicated to a group of green land plants commonly referred to as bryophytes. A broad consensus confirms that bryophytes may not be monophyletic, but rather represent three

Trace Metals and other Contaminants in the Environment, 2003

Bryophytes are excellent indicators for a wide range of contaminants. This is in consequence of a series of morphological and physiological properties like the lack of a cuticle or the existence of large cationic exchange properties within the cell wall. Mosses have mainly been used as accumulation indicators especially for heavy metals, radionucleides and for toxic organic compounds. Reviewing a wide range of investigations on this topic, advantages and further needs for research are discussed. Sulphurous and nitrogen depositions can hardly be analysed by methods in the field of accumulation monitoring but by investigating the frequency, distribution, fertility and vitality of bryophyte species and populations. Similar methods are targeted by global change research, especially for the analysis of climate warming and the influence of land-use intensity on biodiversity.

Cryptogamie Bryologie, 2007