ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2025
The fish challenge to vertebrate cognitive evolution.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 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
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- T. rex cognition was T. rex-like-A critical outlook on diverging views of the neurocognitive evolution in dinosaurs.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Review
- Endothermy, neuron counts, and other issues: Further remarks on neurocognitive evolution in fossil vertebrates.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Article
- Simple life, simple minds? How habitat simplification in aquatic ecosystems shape fish cognition.Animal cognition · 2026Review
- Macroevolutionary brain scaling is a microevolutionary metaphenomenon.Nature communications · 2025Article
- On the mirror test and the evolutionary origin of self-awareness in vertebrates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Lizards and tortoises show evidence of low inhibitory control.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Selection shapes diverse animal minds.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Embodied cognitive evolution and the limits of convergence.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
There is tremendous taxonomic variation in the size, shape and structure of vertebrate brains. While many studies use cross-species comparisons to aim at identifying the ecological factors (social and environmental) that explain what cognitive advantages larger brains confer, a more fundamental divide exists between endotherm and ectotherm vertebrates. Relative to body size, ectotherms have ten times smaller brains than endotherms. Existing ecological hypotheses cannot explain this divide, as some endotherm species with relatively simple social organization and diets still possess larger brains. Furthermore, research demonstrates that at least fishes possess a cognitive 'toolkit' equivalent to that of many endotherms. This is the
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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.