Research in our lab focuses on the symbiotic factors that drive speciation, adaptation, and evolutionary diversification.  We use ants and other insects to tease apart the factors that influence patterns of evolution – from the rise of the flowering plants, symbioses ants have with other insects and plants, and their gut-associated microbial community are all potential underlying factors that may have facilitated their ecological dominance in almost all terrestrial ecosystems.  In addition we are interested in how biogeography, climate change and invasive ants have and will continue to affect the evolutionary processes that generate and sustain high biological diversity in tropical ecosystems and other habitats.  Furthermore we are interested in how we can use molecular methods, next-generation sequencing, and comparative genomics with field-based research to study biodiversity across scales.