The aeroplankton comprises numerous microbes, including viruses, about 1000 different species of bacteria, around 40,000 varieties of fungi, and hundreds of species of protists, algae, mosses and liverworts that live some part of their life cycle as aeroplankton, often as spores, pollen, and wind-scattered seeds.
It lives amongst Adiantum species and other ferns on rocky banks of streams where seepage maintains very limited growth of thallose liverworts and mosses in an otherwise hot and arid environment.
Bryophytes, a paraphyletic group of plants formerly regarded as a single division but now split into mosses (Bryophyta), hornworts (Anthocerotophyta), and liverworts (Marchantiophyta).
The terrestrial larvae usually feed on fungi, especially the fruiting bodies but also spores and hyphae, but some species have been recorded on mosses and liverworts.
Significantly, it has a high diversity of non-vascular plants (mosses, liverworts and lichens) including at least
He built up a collection of some 50,000 specimens of bryophytes (mosses, lichens and liverworts) at his home in Hurstpierpoint, Sussex.