Genetic Dirt Blindness

Checking for germination this morning and when scanning the flats, I thought about how much focus it takes to spot a just-barely-germinated seedling. Not just because they're small, but also because of the lack of color contrast - particularly if you have any perlite that has gone a little green or moss, or chunks and flecks of mineral content.

Not to mention some embryos keep the seed integument on as endosperm gets absorbed, and on top of that small soil particulates can adhere to the seed integument further decreasing visual contrast between seedling and substrate.

All seems like echoes of an amusing party conversation from the previous night, presented as an explanation for why women see housekeeping details that go largely unnoticed by males, historically sparking domestic gender clashes. The concept is  popularly known as Male Genetic Dirt Blindness and is summarized as a sex differential in human vision that suggests a female vision preference favoring fine focus duties such as seed sowing (gatherer labor) vs. larger landscape viewing as would be required for traditionally male duties like hunting.

• The 2003 Dave Barry article that popularized Male Genetic Dirt Blindness (MGDB)
• The book Barry references in the article: What Could He Be Thinking? How A Man's Mind Really Works. by Michael Gurian
• The Barry article was even as an example of success writing in a writing textbook.

In terms of biological trade-offs*, something like less color distinction likely reduces distraction making motion, brightness, and contrast more highly detectable.

Seems legit enough so I tried to find the book that is referenced in Barry's article (link listed above) to see what neurological studies the idea was based on (the book summary linked above claims to be based on two decades of neurological research). Unfortunately my public and OSU libraries showed no holdings of this book, although OSU does have several of the author's other titles.

Also few scholarly google searches did not produce any articles on the specific subject of vision differences attributed to hunter-gather effects on human natural selection.

Despite the lack of serious academic evidence found so far on MGDB, I can't help but notice, due to genes occurring in on the X chromosome that have no analogous Y loci,  males do share a known sex-linked color deficiency, and that limited range of color is thought to be also found in another anthropologically significant daytime hunting species: wolves. And as I scan for seed germination, the idea seems more and more intuitive.

And maybe that's at the pattern I've experienced with all the mansplaining.  Just another reminder that I see my greenhouse projects the way I see them, and that vision is always going to be different from the way anyone see things, particularly the men who think I can only come at things from industrial sized, fossil-fuel guzzling equipment.

Here's to pint-sized, yet large effect, trailblazing. :p

*Incidentally, in questioning why the trade off? Why not being able to see both fine details and motion? Maybe some individuals can, just like what we might expect if there were a normal distribution across any population. These individuals just would not represent the majority, but rather the tails of the bell curve. Some individuals probably can do both and we know this fewer group of individuals by how they excel in types of skills professionally or recreationally (e.g. marksmen).