Microarthropods Mediate Sperm Transfer in Mosses

N. Cronberg; R. Natcheva; K. Hedlund

DOI:10.1126/science.1128707

Corpus ID: 11555211

Microarthropods Mediate Sperm Transfer in Mosses

@article{Cronberg2006MicroarthropodsMS,
  title={Microarthropods Mediate Sperm Transfer in Mosses},
  author={N. Cronberg and R. Natcheva and K. Hedlund},
  journal={Science},
  year={2006},
  volume={313},
  pages={1255 - 1255}
}

N. Cronberg, R. Natcheva, K. Hedlund

Published 2006

Medicine, Biology

Science

Among flowering plants, animals commonly act as pollinators. We showed that fertile moss shoots attract springtails and mites, which in turn carry moss sperm, thereby enhancing the fertilization process. Previously, fertilization of mosses was thought to depend on the capacity of individual sperm to swim through a continuous water layer. The role of microarthropods in moss fertilization resembles the role of animals as pollinators of flowering plants but may be evolutionarily much older because… CONTINUE READING

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