Bryophytes—mosses, hornworts and liverworts—are an immensely important clade for understanding the functional strategies and genetic pathways that have enabled plants to colonise the land.  

Our aim is to broadly characterise different modes of land plant survival in bryophytes by exploring their adaptive pathway at different scales. 

We will focus on important adaptive cases that will allow us to elaborate the evolutionary process from genetic network to whole plant fitness. 

Specifically, we aim to:  

• connect key water-relations traits with plant fitness and survival in early land plant relatives 
• link specific water-relations phenotypes to genetic architecture and whole-plant function 
• provide the data required to model the connection between gene networks and whole-plant function.