**3. Status of lower plant studies in Mesopotamia**

Non-flowering plant studies in Mesopotamia and Kurdistan go back to the end of the eighteen century [32, 37], whereas their role in the environment remains vague and needs much more investigation in this part of the world. However, more than 20 species of pteridophytes and around 180 Bryophyte species have been recorded so far from Iraq and Kurdistan, but almost all studies have been concerned with their distribution habitat, morphology, and taxonomy [34, 42, 49–53]. None of these studies dealt with monitoring or biodiversity and did not refer to any ferns in aquatic ecosystems apart from (Salvinia & Marsilia) in southern marshes of Iraq and only recently Azolla has been also recorded [54]. **Figure 1**(**A-C**).

Pteridophytes, which represent a great and huge number of plants, are least explored as an ecological indicator in most parts of the world. The majority of the papers showed potential use of Pteridophytes as ecological indicators and forwarded helpful criteria. It became evident that more investigation and research about such criteria particularly to use pteridophytes an ecological indicator are needed [7, 55].

Bryophytes on the other hand are commonly used as ecological indicator for the presence or absence of any pollutant since they are known to be among a stress tolerance group of organisms, within which two very widespread ones (Fontinalics & Playtypnidium) are the most common [11]. However, only the first one is common in Kurdistan. In fact, none of the published papers concerned with liverwort and mosses in the region had referred to their role in environment, although the total recorded number of the species so far exceeded 170 species [49, 51].

Almost about 3000 species of algae have been recorded in Iraq as whole and handers of scientific paper had appeared [41]. However, quite a few found to deal with biodiversity and ecological indicators, whereas most of it was concerned again with habitat taxonomy and morphological description. Such studies hopefully will extend to deal with algal role on climatic impact and environmental monitoring as well. That will undoubtedly contribute to fill up part of the existing gap of the knowledge about lower plants in this part of the world.
