Research

Professor Nigel Franks BSc, PhD(Leeds)

Professor Nigel Franks

Professor of Animal Behaviour and Ecology

Contact details

School of Biological Sciences
University of Bristol, Woodland Road
Bristol, BS8 1UG

phone: (0117) 928 8443
phone: (0117) 954 5994
email: nigel.franks@bristol.ac.uk

group: Behaviour, Sensory and Neurobiology
lab: Ant lab

Academic history

  • PhD 1980 University of Leeds
  • Postdoctoral work at the Museum of Comparative Zoology Harvard University
  • Professor of Animal Behaviour & Ecology at Bath University until 2000

Research interests

Collective problem solving in ants

Ant colonies embody all of the most important aspects of biological organization. In simple terms they are more than the sum of their parts and they are robust flexible systems that are capable of self repair. The fundamental advantage of ant colonies as experimental biological materials is that they can be quickly taken apart and rapidly and easily put together again. This is the reason why we study ant colonies rather than natural neural networks which exhibit similar capabilities but can be experimentally intractable.

Our recent studies have begun to demonstrate the algorithmic basis of the self organization of ant colonies. Our focus is on the simple rules of interaction among worker ants that generate complexity and sophistication at the level of the colony. We have developed mathematical models that show how the interaction of simple rules at the microscopic level (individual workers) can generate complexity at the macroscopic level (the colony). These mathematical models of self organisation, often in the form of non-linear differential equations have been experimentally verified. We have shown that the ability of ants to generate spatial structures in their societies is critical to their organisation. This work has been made possible by our development of dynamic, digital, image analysis systems. These systems are some of the most sophisticated of their kind used anywhere in the study of animal behaviour.

Our research into the collective intelligence of ant colonies has been supported not just by biological funding sources but those from both the academic and industrial computer science communities. Other aspects of our research runs over the entire spectrum of ant studies from pheromone chemistry, through the study of the influence of kin selection on life history evolution, to the structure and conservation of ecological communities particularly in tropical rain forest.

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Recent publications

  • Marshall, JAR & Franks, NR. 'Colony-level cognition', Current Biology, 19(10), (pp. R395-R396), 2009. ISSN: 0960-9822
  • Dornhaus, A, Holley, JA & Franks, NR. 'Larger colonies do not have more specialized workers in the ant Temnothorax albipennis', Behavioral Ecology, 20(5), (pp. 922-929), 2009. ISSN: 1045-2249 10.1093/beheco/arp070
  • Franks, NR. 'Social Selection' The Lives of Ants by L. Keller and E. Gordon. Science, 324(5924), (pp. 182-182), 2009. ISSN: 0036-8075 10.1126/science.1172822
  • Franks, NR, Dornhaus, A, Marshall, JAR & Dechaume-Moncharmont, F-X. 'The Dawn of a Golden Age in Mathematical Sociobiology', in J. Gadau and J. Fewell (Eds.), Organization of Insect Societies: From Genome to Sociocomplexity, (pp. 437-459), Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, USA, 2009.
  • Robinson, EJH, Feinerman, O & Franks, NR. 'Flexible task allocation and the organisation of work in ants', Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences, 276(1677), (pp. 4373-4380), 2009. ISSN: 0962-8452 10.1098/rspb.2009.1244
  • Robinson, EJH, Smith, FD, Sullivan, KME & Franks, NR. 'Do ants make direct comparisons?', Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B, 276(1667), (pp. 2635-2641), 2009. ISSN: 0962-8452 10.1098/rspb.2009.0350
  • Robinson, EJH, Richardson, TO, Sendova-Franks, AB, Feinerman, O & Franks, NR. 'Radio-tagging reveals the roles of corpulence, experience and social information in ant decision making', Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 63, (pp. 627-636), 2009. 10.1007/s00265-008-0696-z
  • Franks, NR, Dechaume-Moncharmont, F-X, Hanmore, E & Reynolds, JK. 'Speed versus accuracy in decision-making ants: expediting politics and policy implementation', Phil.Trans.R.Soc.B, 364(1518), (pp. 845-852), 2009. ISSN: 0962-8436 10.1098/rstb.2008.0224
  • Marshall, JAR, Bogacz, R, Dornhaus, A, Planque, R, Kovacs, T & Franks, NR. 'On optimal decision-making in brains and social insect colonies', Journal of the Royal Society: Interface, 6, (pp. 1065-1074), 2009. ISSN: 1742-5689 10.1098/rsif.2008.0511
  • Franks, NR. Swarms of flying ants, BBC News (24), 27/07/09.

View all publications held on the University of Bristol's IRIS database

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