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Science 1 September 2006:
Vol. 313. no. 5791, p. 1255
DOI: 10.1126/science.1128707
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Brevia

Microarthropods Mediate Sperm Transfer in Mosses

Nils Cronberg,1* Rayna Natcheva,1,2 Katarina Hedlund1

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 of the antiquity of the organism groups involved.

1 Department of Ecology, Lund University, S-223 62 Lund, Sweden.
2 Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, 23 G. Bonchev Street, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Nils.Cronberg{at}ekol.lu.se

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)