Alan Andersen is international recognised as the leading ant community ecologist in the world. He has pioneered the use of groups of functionally similar species to gain a predictive understanding of responses of ant communities to environmental stress and disturbance. Andersen has applied this to using ants as bio-indicators in land management, and is an international leader in the use of invertebrates in environmental assessment and monitoring. He has also made internationally important contributions to fire ecology, underpinning fire management for biodiversity conservation.