Chapter 12 Productivity

Productivity It is within the framework of productivity that bryophytes are often considered unimportant as components of the ecosystem. As Martin and Adamson (2001) have pointed out, the photosynthetic capacity of mosses is generally considered to be much lower than that of the tracheophytes. However, they contend that this may be a misleading conclusion based on the method of calculating rates of net CO2 uptake. Rather, they demonstrate that when productivity of bryophytes is calculated on the basis of chlorophyll, differences in rate disappear. It is only when dry mass is used to calculate productivity that bryophytes appear to have a much lower productivity rate than that of tracheophytes.