During periods of high-light exposure excess energy absorbed by chlorophylls forms reactive oxygen species (ROS), which react with and damage sensitive molecular machinery (Li et al., 2009). Plants, therefore, face the trade-off of maximizing light absorbance for use in photosynthesis while also providing adequate photoprotection to minimize ROS damage; desert mosses need to balance these requirements both when metabolically active, and when desiccated. One of the major photoprotective mechanisms in plants is the dissipation of excess light energy as heat, a set of processes collectively known as non-photochemical quenching (NPQ; Müller, Li & Niyogi 2001; Ruban 2016; Malnoë 2018). Light energy absorbed by chlorophylls can follow one of several competitive pathways: transformation into chemical energy via photochemistry and photosynthetic electron transport, transfer to oxygen to form ROS, re-emission as fluorescence from excited chlorophyll molecules, or dissipation as heat via NPQ. This last pathway of heat dissipation functions like a “safety valve” for photosynthesis (Niyogi, 2000) that prevents or reduces damage from excess light.