Moss Express: Insects and mites tote mosses’ sperm
By Susan Milius
After more than a century of speculation by biologists, a lab test has shown that mosses have their own animal-courier system for sperm that’s similar to pollination, researchers say.
![](https://i0.wp.com/www.sciencenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/6102.jpg?resize=300%2C200&ssl=1)
Mosses don’t package their male gametes in pollen, as flowers do, but rely instead on swimming sperm. Textbooks state that moss sperm need to swim or splash to a female moss tuft. However, an experiment with a common moss species shows that sperm hitchhike on mites and tiny insects, says Nils Cronberg of Lund University in Sweden.