Bryophytes: how to conquer an alien planet and live happily (ever after)

There are many push and pull factors that commonly drive individuals to leave their homeland. For example, escaping competition and occupying a novel habitat undoubtedly offer the advantage of new opportunities to pilgrims, but the absence of unfavorable biotic interactions can be counterbalanced by other antagonistic abiotic forces. After all, conquering an alien planet is not now nor ever was an easy task. We cannot know how many attempts and failures have punctuated the journey that led ancestral, photosynthetic organisms to leave the aquatic world and successfully establish on dry land. However, some traits developed by the ancestors of modern bryophytes that allowed them to adapt their life cycle to such a different habitat and persist there, have been undoubtedly identified.