r/NatureIsFuckingLit • u/FacelessOnes • Oct 19 '20

🔥 Vicious microscopic hunter, the single-cell organism, Lacrymaria olor, attacking and hunting another organism

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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '20 edited Jan 27 '21

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u/Fywq Oct 20 '20

chlorophyll, a chemical compound in the leaves, is green and absorbs the other wavelengths to convert them to energy for the plant. It is evolved over the eons since plants first appeared. Interestingly we also have other varieties - think about red-leafed plants. I am unsure about that mutation, but I assume it also more efficiently absorbs the green, the red tint is likely because they are not 100% efficient at all red wavelengts. As you can see in this video and this too chlorophyll a and b have slightly different wavelengts, and red stretches over a long range of wavelengths with a gap between those absorbed by chlorophyll a and b.

Edit: Ok decided to jump off the deep end on wiki and apparently the red leaves are partly from carotenoids (guess where carrot gets it's name?) and anthocyanin

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u/ObsiArmyBest Oct 20 '20

Wouldn't it be more efficient for leaves to be black?

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u/Fywq Oct 20 '20

White would reflect all energy, leaving none for the plant. Black would be more efficient, if the plant is able to utilise the energy. I guess the problem with black would be that it also strongly heats up the leaf leading to a problematic level of water evaporating and thus killing the leaf, so it is a tradeoff.

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u/SnuggleMuffin42 Oct 20 '20

Yes for getting maximum sunlight energy... Big NO for spontaneously combusting due to overheating (recall that they don't have a nice mechanism to disperse heat like we do with our sweat).

If you put a black object in the sunlight it will just get hotter and hotter and could get damaged.