[TML] Alien ecologies

[Joseph Paul]

Except if your generalization is "It is a crap shoot".

What would be interesting is finding what happens up the chain if the
vegetation is not green. What does that make happen in insects, herbivores
and carnivores? Does that compound have very different interactions with
animals that are used to chlorophyll?

Joseph Paul

 >-----Original Message-----
 >From: tml-bounces at travellercentral.com
 >[mailto:tml-bounces at travellercentral.com]On Behalf Of Jerry W Barrington
 >Sent: Friday, August 22, 2008 12:03 AM
 >To: TML
 >Subject: Re: [TML] Alien ecologies
 >
 >
 >On 8/21/08 3:58 AM, "Robert" <robocon at ozemail.com.au> wrote:
 >
 >> Darby Eckles wrote:
 >>> When I run games, I like to have very alien planets.
 >>
 >> This isn't a bad article from Scientific American (April '08):
 >> http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-color-of-plants-on-other-worlds
 >>
 >http://www.sciam.com/slideshow.cfm?id=the-color-of-plants-on-other-worlds
 >>
 >> The info may be helpful for your worldbuilding!
 >
 >I'm not sure it's all that helpful.  Look at Earth: chlorophyll, the main
 >photosynthesizing pigment, does *not* have it's best absorption where the
 >sun has it's best emissions.  Thus it would be naive to think that merely
 >shifting the peak emission will likely result in a different pigment.  If
 >chlorophyll is one of the easiest pigments to evolve, then it may have a
 >shot at dominance on any inhabitable planet.  Conversely, if there's no
 >special reason why chlorophyll happened to evolve, then even a very
 >Earth-like planet could have very divergent plants.
 >
 >We just don't know enough to generalize.  And by generalizing,
 >you make the
 >life too predictable based on the local star.
 >
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