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What are the main characteristics of the bryophytes?

Bryophytes are nonvascular plants, i.e., they do not have conductive tissues and they perform transport of water and nutrients by diffusion; they are cryptogamic, i.e., they do not present flowers or seeds; they are small-sized; they present water-dependant fecundation; in their life cycle the lasting form is haploid (the gametophyte) and the sporophyte depends on the gametophyte to survive.

What are the main bryophyte groups?

The main bryophyte groups are the mosses, the liverworts and the hornworts.

How substance transport is made across the bryophyte tissues? How this feature is related to the general size of these plants?

In bryophytes there are no water-conducting neither nutrient-conducting structures and the transport of these substances is done by cell to cell diffusion. The small size of bryophytes relates to this feature since if there are no conductive vessels it is not viable having cells too far from the others (the emergence of the conductive tissues in tracheophytes allowed their increase in size).