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Research in the field integrates the evolutionary biology of organisms and ecology to study biodiversity and elucidate the evolutionary patterns and processes underlying biological speciation. Discovering and describing new species, understanding how new species arise and how biodiversity is maintained in our ecosystems is important for developing strategies to combat the global biodiversity crisis. Our studies focus on ants because their great diversity, ecological dominance, complex social behavior and multiple symbiotic interactions make them an ideal study system for exploring long-standing questions in ecology, evolutionary biology and biodiversity research.