BIEB 166 Lecture Notes - Rayleigh Scattering, Mie Scattering, Available Light
Document Summary
Certain wavelengths predominate in many habitats due to selective absorption and/or scatter. Animals should avoid producing colors that are missing in the available spectrum because the result will be black. Terrestrial habitats affected by sun angle, weather, and vegetation. Forest light is green, dawn/twilight is purple, clouds produce grey, fog produces white veiling light. As we go deeper in the water, less light is available. Increasingly when we go deeper, only blue light is available. Differential absorption of photons influence the amount of ambient light available. Reflects lots of other light (yellow, green, red, blue, orange) in shallow water (a lot of ambient light in shallow water) Large gap, large amount of very bright white light from the sun. The conspicuousness of the signaler depends on its contrast with the background. Signalers can exploit any one of the four signal properties to maximize contrast. Help transmitting sound to a further distance (sound monopole)