Research data ยท Social behavior

Resident-intruder test

From 2021 to 2025, 134 animal research papers mentioned the resident-intruder test in their title or abstract, ranking it 50th of the 90 tests we track.

That is 6% fewer than the 142 papers of 2011 to 2015. Papers that mention any of the 90 tests rose 22% over the same span.

134 animal research papers from 2021 to 2025 mentioned the test
6% fewer papers than in 2011 to 2015
50th of the 90 tests by papers from 2021 to 2025
55% of these papers used mice and 34% used rats

Papers by year

Animal research papers that mention the resident-intruder test, by year, 2001 to 2026

The 2026 bar counts papers added to PubMed by November 8, 2026.

  • Papers in a full year
  • 2026 so far
Show the counts for each year
Papers by year
YearPapers
200112
200211
200313
200411
200516
200616
200728
200815
200931
201027
201127
201229
201331
201421
201534
201620
201725
201826
201937
202021
202125
202231
202326
202424
202528
2026 (part year)26

Papers that mention the resident-intruder test in mice and in rats, by year, 2001 to 2025

  • Mouse
  • Rat
Show the counts for each year and species
Papers by year, mice and rats
YearMouseRat
200174
200291
200354
200464
200534
200648
20071111
200894
2009208
2010148
20111412
2012177
2013817
2014912
20151910
2016129
20171410
2018136
20192413
2020128
2021138
2022208
20231210
2024159
20251411

Which species the papers used

Each bar is a share of the 134 papers from 2021 to 2025. A paper can use more than one species, so the shares can add to more than 100%.

Species

Mouse
74 papers 55%
Rat
46 papers 34%
Other animals
14 papers 10%
Zebrafish
1 paper 1%

โ€œOther animalsโ€ counts papers that use none of the other species in this chart.

Strains and genetic lines

Strain names come from the MeSH terms PubMed adds when it indexes a paper. PubMed has indexed 103 of the 134 papers, so each bar is a share of those 103.

C57BL mice
15 papers 15%
Wistar rats
12 papers 12%
Sprague-Dawley rats
9 papers 9%
Transgenic mice
7 papers 7%
Knockout mice
6 papers 6%
Other inbred mice
2 papers 2%
ICR mice
2 papers 2%
Long-Evans rats
1 paper 1%

A paper indexed under two of these headings, such as knockout mice and a strain, counts under both.

Disease models these papers study

Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention the resident-intruder test and study that disease model, with its share of the 134 papers. The model comes from a paper's MeSH terms. For a paper PubMed has not indexed, it comes from PubTator 3, NCBI's text-mining service, when that service finds the disease in the title or abstract. A paper can count under more than one model.

Papers from 2021 to 2025 by disease model

Tests mentioned alongside the resident-intruder test

Each bar counts the papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests, with its share of the 134 papers that mention the resident-intruder test.

Papers from 2021 to 2025 that mention both tests

The most cited papers from 2021 to 2025

These papers from 2021 to 2025 mention the resident-intruder test and have the most citations, as counted by NIH's iCite on November 5, 2026.

  1. Minimal influence of estrous cycle on studies of female mouse behaviors.

    Front Mol Neurosci, 2023. 45 citations.

  2. Naringin Confers Protection against Psychosocial Defeat Stress-Induced Neurobehavioral Deficits in Mice: Involvement of Glutamic Acid Decarboxylase Isoform-67, Oxido-Nitrergic Stress, and Neuroinflammatory Mechanisms.

    J Mol Neurosci, 2021. 39 citations.

  3. Sex differences in appetitive and reactive aggression.

    Neuropsychopharmacology, 2022. 38 citations.

  4. A gut reaction? The role of the microbiome in aggression.

    Brain Behav Immun, 2024. 25 citations.

  5. The Multi-Agent Behavior Dataset: Mouse Dyadic Social Interactions.

    Adv Neural Inf Process Syst, 2021. 20 citations.

How we counted

A count is the number of animal research papers whose title or abstract mentions one of the test's search terms. It is not a count of experiments, labs or animals.

A paper that mentions the resident-intruder test only in its methods is missed, so the count runs low. The count includes 1 review. For 31 of the 134 papers, PubMed's indexing gave no species, so the species came from PubTator 3 finding one in the title or abstract.

The test's search terms are in the test list download. The full method, with each source and its terms of use, is on our main page, Behavioral tests in published research.

More social behavior tests

These social behavior tests also have a page, with their papers from 2021 to 2025. Each test with 30 or more papers gets one.

How to cite

APA

ConductScience. (2026, November 10). Resident-intruder test in published research [Data set]. https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/resident-intruder

BibTeX

@misc{conductscience_resident_intruder_2026,
  author = {{ConductScience}},
  title = {Resident-intruder test in published research},
  year = {2026},
  month = nov,
  url = {https://conductscience.com/data/behavioral-tests/resident-intruder},
  note = {Data set, released November 10, 2026},
}

Apparatus for the resident-intruder test

Our store sells two products for the resident-intruder test.

Shop the apparatus