Comparison of in vitro decomposition of bryophytic and tracheophytic plant material

Abstract

The fossil record of bryophytes is generally poor and infertile plants attributable to liverworts and mosses could also be thalloid vascular plant gametophytes or herbaceous lycophytes respectively. The paucity of the bryophytic record could be the result of relatively rapid degradation of bryophytic material in comparison to that of vascular plants, the absence of lignified cells in bryophytes sustaining this belief. However, certain organs of bryophytes are as robust as those of vascular plants (e.g. spores) and the hydroxybenzofuran polymers produced by some mosses could be of similar preservational resistance to lignins. A simplistic experiment to test the relative resistance to decay of bryophytic material has been undertaken. Its findings suggest that bryophytic plant material has a similar preservational potential to that of a selected vascular plant, particularly in organic rich sediments. This result may be construed to imply that bryophytes were indeed less abundant in the preservational environments of the Coal Measures than might be expected on the basis of current palaeoenvironmental reconstructions.