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Was life on the early Earth purple?
- eiaoa 8y agoIs there some reason why it would be mal-adaptive for a plant to have both retinal (yellow and green) and chlorophyll (red and blue) photosynthesis? Seems like it would greatly increase the energy it could harvest, which would probably be especially helpful to a shade plant.
- qbrass 8y agoPlants only have so much leaf area to devote to photosynthesis so if there's more light in certain frequencies, they're better off specializing than generalizing. If the type of available light varied a lot, then generalizing would help more.