ReviewBehavioral ecology and sociobiology2019
What constitutes "social complexity" and "social intelligence" in birds? Lessons from ravens.
Review in Behavioral ecology and sociobiology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 47 papers.
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
47 citing papers in PubMed, 100 citations in OpenAlex.
- Relationship Value, Emotion, and Uncertainty Shape Conflict-Resolution Communication in a Wild Primate.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2026Article
- Neural basis of social hierarchy across species.Nature reviews. Neuroscience · 2026Review
- Spatio-temporal patterns of juvenile common ravens integrating into a free-flying non-breeder flock.iScience · 2026Article
- An integrative, peer-reviewed and open-source cooperative-breeding database (Co-BreeD).The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Temperament and cognitive flexibility across lemur species.Animal behaviour · 2025Article
- Rethinking raptors: caracaras as a model for avian cognition in the wild.Animal cognition · 2025Review
- The coevolution of cognition and sociality.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Group traits moderate the relationship between individual social traits and fitness in gorillas.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Social learning and culture in birds: emerging patterns and relevance to conservation.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Effects of a short-term removal of the dominant male on vocalization in captive groups of large-billed crows (Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Pair-bond strength is consistent and related to partner responsiveness in a wild corvid.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Patterns of object play behaviour and its functional implications in free-flying common ravens.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The secret social life of solitary mammals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Using global remote camera data of a solitary species complex to evaluate the drivers of group formation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Gaze tracking of large-billed crows (Corvus macrorhynchos) in a motion capture system.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- Dynamic foraging strategy adaptation to heterogeneous environments contributes to social aggregation in snub-nosed monkeys.Zoological research · 2024Article
- Primate social organization evolved from a flexible pair-living ancestor.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- US and Canadian cat caregiver's ratings of cat-cat interactions: A video-based survey.Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2024Article
- Extended DEMATEL method with intuitionistic fuzzy information: A case of electric vehicles.PloS one · 2024Article
- Social uncertainty promotes signal complexity during approaches in wild chimpanzees (Royal Society open science · 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
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
In the last decades, the assumption that complex social life is cognitively challenging, and thus can drive mental evolution, has received much support from empirical studies in nonhuman primates. While extending the scope to other mammals and birds, different views have been adopted on what constitutes social complexity and which specific cognitive skills are selected for. Notably, many avian species form "open" groups as non-breeders (i.e., seasonally and before sexual maturity) that have been largely ignored as potential sources of social complexity. Reviewing 30 years of research on ravens, we illustrate the socio-ecological conditions faced by these birds as non-breeders and discuss how these relate to their socio-cognitive skills. We argue that the non-breeding period is key to understand raven social life and, to a larger extent, avian social life in general. We furthermore emphasize how the combination of the large-scale perspective (defining social system components: e.g., social organization, mating system) and the individual-scale perspective on social systems allows to better capture the complete set of social challenges experienced by individuals throughout their life, ultimately resulting on a more comprehensive understanding of species' social complexity.
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.