Invasive species present both a range of ecological threats, and a research opportunity. On one hand, anthropogenic introductions of non-native organisms may disrupt native ecosystems. On the other hand, these introductions are also large-scale unintended experiments, with important implications for basic biology, as well as for the mitigation of damage caused by invasive species. The little fire ant (Wasmannia auropunctata), a Neotropical native that has recently spread to many Pacific archipelagos and to Central Africa exhibits largely clonal reproduction by queens, with occasional queen clones being sexually produced. Most, if not all, of the populations arise from the introduction of a single queen clone. This reproductive strategy makes it straightforward to control for genetic factors in ecological studies, since most introductions arise from a single regionally widespread clone. Also, since the founding queen clone and its sexually produced clonal offspring can be found in the same population, and even in the same nest, one can directly infer which evolutionary changes took place in since introduction. This talk will present new findings from the recently sequenced little fire ant genome.