Horizontal gene transfer found between moss plastids
The transfer may have been triggered by the large-scale liming of acidic mires.
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March 1, 2021
Tagged: moss
February 1, 2019
Algal research that has its ups and downs…
Every so often you chance upon a scientific study that makes you think “What? That’s new or worthy of study (and publication…)?” I had that reaction when I saw the paper entitled, “Photosynthesis and circadian rhythms regulate the buoyancy of marimo lake balls” by Dora Cano-Ramirez et al.. Marimo balls are spheres of Aegagropila linnaei [a filamentous, multicellular, freshwater green alga]. The ‘phycospheres’ are found in shallow freshwaters such as lakes in Iceland, and – most famously – in Lake Akan in Japan. Although Lake Akan is home to an estimated population of 600 million marimo – some exceeding 30...
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July 23, 2018
Exquisitely preserved tiny fossils are key for understanding moss evolution
Tiny 135-million-year-old moss fossils found in rocks from western Canada preserve exquisite anatomical details. These fossils open an unexpected window on moss evolution, as they allow for recognition of living moss lineages deep in the fossil record. This way, they add to the notoriously sparse fossil record of the group. Click images to enlarge Cretaceous rocks on Vancouver Island (British Columbia) (FIG 1) are revealing rich assemblages of plant fossils (FIG 2) that contain a broad diversity of minute mosses. The moss fossils show unexpectedly delicate anatomical detail at very small scales. Some reveal the arrangement of diverse cell types...
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May 30, 2018
Amazing moss and how to identify it
If I told you that during a 200m walk down a suburban London street I saw 13 different species from one group of organisms, you might struggle to imagine what I could have seen. You’d probably be even more surprised to learn that this significant diversity belongs to one of our most unassuming plant groups: the mosses. Even as an unashamed plant enthusiast and keen botanist, I’ve always struggled to get my head around mosses. How can it be possible to tell apart such tiny and uniform plants? Or so I thought. A fantastic week on the Natural History Museum’s...
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April 4, 2018
Spore liberation in mosses
The ability to perform hygroscopic movements has evolved in many plant lineages and relates to a multitude of different functions such as seed burial, flower protection or regulation of diaspore release. In a recent Editor’s Choice article published in AoB PLANTS, Gallenmüller et al. provide an analysis of spore liberation in mosses in response to humidity conditions. The study presents, for the first time, temporally and spatially well-resolved kinematic analyses of the complex hygroscopic movements performed by the peristome teeth inserted at the mouth of the spore capsule and gives insights into their sophisticated functional morphology and anatomy. The authors...
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January 2, 2018
Sex-specific morphology and physiology in Ceratodon purpureus
Separate sexes and biased sex ratios are common in bryophytes, yet little is known about how fine-scale, sex-specific morphological traits are correlated with physiology and population sex-ratios. Slate et al. analysed cellular, leaf, and canopy traits and photochemical measurements in the dioecious moss Ceratodon purpureus. Male and female plants differed in cell, leaf and photochemical measures. These sexual dimorphisms were female biased, with females having larger and thicker leaves and greater values for chlorophyll fluorescence-based, leaf photochemistry measurements than males. Female traits were also more variable than male traits. Interestingly, field population sex ratios were significantly male biased in two...
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January 17, 2017
Moss, bringer of stability, and life…
This week Nigel Chaffey takes a closer look at mosses, the mighty colonisers of the land.
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August 19, 2016
Spore settling velocity to assess moss dispersal rates
The settling velocity of diaspores is a key parameter influencing dispersal ability in wind-dispersed plants but remains largely undocumented in bryophytes. Zanatta et al. measured this parameter for nine species using a fall tower design combined with a high-speed camera and determine that, while settling velocity can be estimated by spore diameter in most of the cases, some spores show important departures from theoretical expectations. The authors investigate the potential causes of this divergence by taking specific variation in spore shape and surface roughness into account and suggest that this affects the balance between density and drag.
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February 8, 2016
Embryonic moss sporophytes can be hardened to desiccation tolerance
Embryos of the moss Aloina ambigua are inducibly desiccation tolerant (DT), requiring a slow-dry period to confer tolerance to air-dryness. Hardening to DT describes a condition of temporary tolerance to a rapid-dry event (<30 min from full turgor to air-dryness) that is conferred by a prior slow-dry event. Brinda et al. found for the first time that moss embryos can indeed be hardened to DT, by first slowly drying embryos and equilibrating them at 50 % relative humidity, then rehydrating the embryos and exposing them to a rapid dry event at intervals of 24 h. The degree of hardening to...
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April 3, 2015
Sporophyte desiccation tolerance in the moss Aloina
Stark and Brinda study cultured sporophytes and vegetative shoots from a single genotype of the moss Aloina ambigua.
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July 1, 2014
A day in the life…
The Node’s ‘a day in the life of a …’ series is designed to give insights into the working of the labs – and the people – that try to unravel development,
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March 4, 2014
The March 2013 issue of Annals of Botany is now Free Access
The March 2013 issue of Annals of Botany is now Free Access. The cover image is of two generations of moss, the younger sporophytes growing from the parent gametophyte. AJ Cann blogged about this paper last year. If you get confused between sporophytes and gametophytes, then you’re not alone. Plants alternate generations between sporophytes and gametophytes. The children of oak trees aren’t acorns, they’re grandchildren. The ‘children’ of oaks would be pollen and the embryo sacs they pollinate. Contrary to popular belief pollen isn’t plant sperm.
Continue reading The March 2013 issue of Annals of Botany is now Free AccessMoss: is the mother protecting the offspring, or holding it back?
Jessica M. Budke adds another dimension to a recent paper about the development of the calyptra in moss. Is there parent-offspring conflict?
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April 5, 2013
Mum versus Dad: Parent–offspring conflict in mosses
Non-flowering plants have rather complex reproductive life cycles compared to the more familiar pattern of fertilization and seed formation seen in Angiosperms.
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