ArticleRoyal Society open science2021
Measuring complexity in organisms and organizations.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 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
22 citing papers in PubMed.
- Acoustic analysis in relation to kinship and familiarity for contact calls of adult female golden snub-nosed monkeys living in a multilevel society.Current zoology · 2026Article
- Virulence attenuation of intestinal pathogenicity via combined gene deletion in duck enteritis vaccine strain restores gut microbiota balance and enhances safety.Poultry science · 2026Article
- Can the Timing of the Origin of Life Be Inferred from Trends in the Growth of Organismal Complexity?Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- When prediction fails: a computational complexity view of stress.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2026Article
- Inhibitory control tests in non-human animals: validity, reliability, and perspectives.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- The Constructive Neutral Evolution of Behaviour.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Tolerant and despotic macaques show divergent temperament but similar theory of mind.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Teeth Baring as a Model to Understand Complex Facial Signals in a Tolerant Macaque Species.American journal of primatology · 2025Article
- Quantifying the configurational complexity of biological systems in multivariate 'complexity space'.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Sociality does not predict signal complexity in response to playback in apteronotid weakly electric fishes.Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2025Article
- Individual and ecological heterogeneity promote complex communication in social vertebrate group decisions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Review
- Vocal complexity in a socially complex corvid: gradation, diversity and lack of common call repertoire in male rooks.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- The construction of a measure of behavioural complexity as a potential individual-based welfare indicator and its theoretical validation.Animal welfare (South Mimms, England) · 2024Article
- Article
- Bird clades with less complex appendicular skeletons tend to have higher species richness.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Tolerant macaque species are less impulsive and reactive.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- Divergent vertebral formulae shape the evolution of axial complexity in mammals.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Monitoring the advancements in the technology of artificial cells by determining their complexity degree: Hints from complex systems descriptors.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2023Article
- Crested macaque facial movements are more intense and stereotyped in potentially risky social interactions.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Visual complexity of egg patterns predicts egg rejection according to Weber's law.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
While there is no consensus about the definition of complexity, it is widely accepted that the ability to produce uncertainty is the most prominent characteristic of complex systems. We introduce new metrics that purport to quantify the complexity of living organisms and social organizations based on their levels of uncertainty. We consider three major dimensions regarding complexity: diversity based on the number of system elements and the number of categories of these elements; flexibility which bears upon variations in the elements; and combinability which refers to the patterns of connection between elements. These three dimensions are quantified using Shannon's uncertainty formula, and they can be integrated to provide a tripartite complexity index. We provide a calculation example that illustrates the use of these indices for comparing the complexity of different social systems. These indices distinguish themselves by a theoretical basis grounded on the amount of uncertainty, and the requirement that several aspects of the systems be accounted for to compare their degree of complexity. We expect that these new complexity indices will encourage research programmes aiming to compare the complexity levels of systems belonging to different realms.
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.