ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2017
Counting insects.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 50 citations in OpenAlex.
- Numerical cognition: A meta-analysis of neuroimaging, transcranial magnetic stimulation and brain-damaged patients studies.NeuroImage. Clinical · 2019Pooled it
- Numerical competence in peafowl: small quantity discrimination.Animal cognition · 2026Article
- Diversity of visual inputs to Kenyon cells of the Drosophila mushroom body.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Numerical discrimination in Drosophila melanogaster.Cell reports · 2023Article
- Zebrafish excel in number discrimination under an operant conditioning paradigm.Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Does quantity matter to a stingless bee?Animal cognition · 2022Article
- Understanding the Effects of Transcranial Electrical Stimulation in Numerical Cognition: A Systematic Review for Clinical Translation.Journal of clinical medicine · 2022Review
- Quantitative abilities of invertebrates: a methodological review.Animal cognition · 2022Review
- Boosting Numerical Cognition in Children and Adolescents with Mathematical Learning Disabilities by a Brain-Based Intervention: A Study Protocol for a Randomized, Sham-Controlled Clinical Trial.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2021Article
- Non-numerical strategies used by bees to solve numerical cognition tasks.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Continuous versus discrete quantity discrimination in dune snail (Mollusca: Gastropoda) seeking thermal refuges.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Numerosities and Other Magnitudes in the Brains: A Comparative View.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Review
- Bumblebees Use Sequential Scanning of Countable Items in Visual Patterns to Solve Numerosity Tasks.Integrative and comparative biology · 2020Article
- Response to change in the number of visual stimuli in zebrafish:A behavioural and molecular study.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Article
- Bumblebees Learn a Relational Rule but Switch to a Win-Stay/Lose-Switch Heuristic After Extensive Training.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2020Article
- Article
- Symbolic representation of numerosity by honeybees ( Apis mellifera): matching characters to small quantities.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Honeybees foraging for numbers.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2019Review
- Numerical cognition in honeybees enables addition and subtraction.Science advances · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
When counting-like abilities were first described in the honeybee in the mid-1990s, many scholars were sceptical, but such capacities have since been confirmed in a number of paradigms and also in other insect species. Counter to the intuitive notion that counting is a cognitively advanced ability, neural network analyses indicate that it can be mediated by very small neural circuits, and we should therefore perhaps not be surprised that insects and other small-brained animals such as some small fish exhibit such abilities. One outstanding question is how bees actually acquire numerical information. For perception of small numerosities, working-memory capacity may limit the number of items that can be enumerated, but within these limits, numerosity can be evaluated accurately and (at least in primates) in parallel. However, presentation of visual stimuli in parallel does not automatically ensure parallel processing. Recent work on the question of whether bees can see 'at a glance' indicates that bees must acquire spatial detail by sequential scanning rather than parallel processing. We explore how this might be tested for a numerosity task in bees and other animals.This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'The origins of numerical abilities'.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.