ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews progress in understanding of how bryophytes acquire and utilizes mineral nutrients. It includes their significance in nutrient transfers within ecosystems, sources of nutrients, the effects of desiccation on productivity and nutrient retention, and translocation and internal redistribution of nutrients. The use of manipulative experiments involving removal of mosses from specific microhabitats may be particularly revealing in unravelling ecosystem nutrient pathways. The importance of bryophytes in the nutrient economies of ecosystems seems to be firmly established in different types of mossy forest, where they intercept nutrients in throughfall and may deprive the underlying tree roots. Where there is a transport system, there exists the possibility of internal redistribution of mineral nutrients from old senescing tissues to younger growth. If bryophytes should prove to be efficient at such internal redistribution this would largely isolate them from reliance on external supplies.
