Homage to Mary Talbot, or why are there so many kinds of ants?

Mary Talbot contributed much new insight into the inner working of ant communities through detailed natural history studies of coexisting ant species. Since then, ant community ecology has moved forward, or perhaps in some ways backward, by adopting more macroecological approaches. Here, I argue that progress in ant community ecology will arise from improved knowledge of basic autecology, classification of species into functional groups, and understanding of evolutionary and biogeographic history. The integration of these approaches should enable a global test of ecological and evolutionary convergence, which might reveal general trends in the structure of, and process shaping, ant communities.