Study shows how giant clams harvest the sun!

Once again, our amazing, delicious friends are proving that they 'shine' brightest of all in the underwater ecosystem:

"Many mollusks, like squid, octopuses, snails and cuttlefish," Sweeney said, "have iridescent structures, but almost all use them for camouflage or for signaling to mates. We knew giant clams weren't doing either of those things, so we wanted to know what they were using them for."

Just enough to whet my interest (and my appetite!)

"We see that, at any vertical position within the clam tissue, the light comes in at just about the highest rate at which these algae can make use of photons most efficiently," Sweeney said. "The entire system is scaled so the algae absorb light exactly at the rate where they are happiest."

Could photovoltaic cells use this technology to increase efficiency?  Read more clam news here: http://phys.org/news/2014-10-giant-clams-harness-sun.html