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Professor Nigel Franks

Contact details

School of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol, Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UG.
Phone: +44 (0)117 954 5994/928 8443 (Internal 45994/8443)
Fax: +44 (0)117 331 7985
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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.

Recent Publications

Journal

• Robinson, EJH, Smith, FD, Sullivan, KME & Franks, NR. (2009) Do ants make direct comparisons? Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B, Royal Society of London, 276(1667), 2635 - 2641.

• Marshall, JAR & Franks, NR. (2009) Colony-level cognition. Current Biology, Elsevier Ltd, 19(10), R395 - R396.

• Dornhaus, A, Holley, JA & Franks, NR. (2009) Larger colonies do not have more specialized workers in the ant Temnothorax albipennis. Behavioral Ecology, Oxford University Press, 20(5), 922 - 929.

• Marshall, JAR, Bogacz, R, Dornhaus, A, Planque, R, Kovacs, T & Franks, NR. (2009) On optimal decision-making in brains and social insect colonies. Journal of the Royal Society: Interface, Royal Society of London, 6, 1065 - 1074.

• Robinson, EJH, Feinerman, O & Franks, NR. (2009) Flexible task allocation and the organisation of work in ants. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London Series B-Biological Sciences, Royal Society of London, 276(1677), 4373 - 4380.

• Robinson, EJH, Richardson, TO, Sendova-Franks, AB, Feinerman, O & Franks, NR. (2009) Radio-tagging reveals the roles of corpulence, experience and social information in ant decision making. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 63, 627 - 636.

• Franks, NR, Dechaume-Moncharmont, F-X, Hanmore, E & Reynolds, JK. (2009) Speed versus accuracy in decision-making ants: expediting politics and policy implementation. Phil.Trans.R.Soc.B, Royal Society of London, 364(1518), 845 - 852.

• Franks, NR. (2009) Social Selection. Science, American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science, 324(5924), 182 - 182.

• Gross, R, Houston, AI, Collins, EJ, McNamara, JM, Dechaume-Moncharmont, F-X & Franks, NR. (2008) Simple learning rules to cope with changing environments. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 5, 1193 - 1202.

• Franks, NR, Hardcastle, KA, Collins, S, Smith, FD, Sullivan, KME, Robinson, EJH & Sendova-Franks, AB. (2008) Can ant colonies choose a far-and-away better nest over an in-the-way poor one. Animal Behaviour, 76, 323 - 334.

View All Publications Held on the University of Bristol's IRIS database

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