For Advanced Hobbyists - Importance of Green Light in Photosynthesis

[taricha]

This is a fun nugget from the paper Lasse posted.

The chlorophyll emission cross sections reveal that blue light (less than 500 nm) is indeed strongly absorbed by the photosynthetic pigments, while yellow-orange light (520 – 620 nm) is used much deeper within the tissue.
...
Wangpraseurt et al. [44] have shown that the PAR availability decreases with tissue depth down to the skeleton and that the available light at the tissue-skeleton interface is dominated by orange-red light (550 – 650 nm). Despite the absence of a skeleton in corallimorpharian tissue, the chlorophyll fluorescence profiles observed are consistent with scalar irradiance measurements made in corals [44,49] and demonstrate that the wavelengths previously observed to penetrate deeply are also absorbed by the symbionts’ photosynthetic pigments.

Though green doesn't dominate the light that gets deep into the coral tissue - and nowhere do they mention "green" - but based on the wavelengths of the windows into coral tissue, some light we'd call green is making its way in there.

 

[Dana Riddle]

Walz markets a PAM fluorometer that measures rates of photosynthesis at various bandwidths. While this could avoid estimating the Emerson Enhancement Effect, it might be interesting to see the results when applied to zooxanthellae.
http://walz.com/products/chl_p700/multi-color-pam/introduction.html
With a lot of effort, I could rig up a device to estimate light absorbance and electron transport rates using an Ocean Optics spec and the Walz Junior PAM fluorometer, respectively. If I have enough years left.... LOL.

 

[Lasse]

@Dana Riddle Do as I - put up the ideas - let the youngster do the job

Sincerely Lasse

 

[Dana Riddle]

@Dana Riddle Do as I - put up the ideas - let the youngster do the job

Sincerely Lasse

OK youngsters (just about everyone considering my age!) EBay has killer deals on used Ocean Optics spectrometers and fiber optic fluorometers.

 

[mcarroll]

This is a fun nugget from the paper Lasse posted.

(That's citing the In situ paper. I knew we were on the same wavelength. Pun. Sorry.)

 

[mcarroll]

Though green doesn't dominate the light that gets deep into the coral tissue - and nowhere do they mention "green" - but based on the wavelengths of the windows into coral tissue, some light we'd call green is making its way in there.

Green is roughly 520-560nm, so it's on the edge.

They definitely seem to be crafting a light environment that's dominated by the lowest-energy waves. Really interesting!