SynthesiseLife2018
Meta-analysis challenges a textbook example of status signalling and demonstrates publication bias.
Synthesis in eLife, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 11 of them syntheses 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
33 citing papers in PubMed, 11 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Trade-offs in avian parental care: a review of theory and meta-analysis of brood size manipulations.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Pooled it
- Synthesis of Nature's Extravaganza: An Augmented Meta-Meta-Analysis on (Putative) Sexual Signals.Ecology letters · 2025Pooled it
- Do Egg Hormones Have Fitness Consequences in Wild Birds? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.Ecology letters · 2025Pooled it
- Quantifying research waste in ecology.Nature ecology & evolution · 2022Pooled it
- A meta-analysis on the evolution of the Lombard effect reveals that amplitude adjustments are a widespread vertebrate mechanism.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Pooled it
- Sex-specific inbreeding depression: A meta-analysis.Ecology letters · 2022Pooled it
- Meta-analysis reveals an extreme "decline effect" in the impacts of ocean acidification on fish behavior.PLoS biology · 2022Pooled it
- Why don't all animals avoid inbreeding?Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Pooled it
- Species sensitivities to a global pollutant: A meta-analysis on acoustic signals in response to anthropogenic noise.Global change biology · 2021Pooled it
- A meta-analysis of biological impacts of artificial light at night.Nature ecology & evolution · 2021Pooled it
- Meta-analysis challenges a textbook example of status signalling and demonstrates publication bias.eLife · 2018Pooled it
- Fifty Years Later, and We Still Don't Know About Badges of Status.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Behavioural ecology in the twenty-first century.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Review
- Harnessing meta-analyses' insights in ecology and evolution research.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Parrot politics: social decision-making in wild parrots relies on both individual recognition and intrinsic markers.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Reliability of meta-analyses in ecology and evolution: (mostly) good news from a case study on sexual signals.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Indirect genetic effects increase the heritable variation available to selection and are largest for behaviors: a meta-analysis.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- Not so social in old age: demography as one driver of decreasing sociality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Assessing the Association Between Animal Color and Behavior: A Meta-Analysis of Experimental Studies.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Publication bias impacts on effect size, statistical power, and magnitude (Type M) and sign (Type S) errors in ecology and evolutionary biology.BMC biology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
12 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The status signalling hypothesis aims to explain within-species variation in ornamentation by suggesting that some ornaments signal dominance status. Here, we use multilevel meta-analytic models to challenge the textbook example of this hypothesis, the black bib of male house sparrows (
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.