Ants are known to play significant roles in most terrestrial ecosystems, acting simultaneously as predators, competitors, seed dispersers and soil nutrient transporters1. The capacity of ant communities to function in each of these roles may be affected by common disturbance regimes such as fire in the Southwestern United States and other fire prone regions. Fire affects ant communities by changing vegetation structure and reducing foraging area to the soil surface, increasing insolation, or altering resource base. These factors can modify the outcome of interspecific competition, which may result in altered ant community structure and function. We asked how fire affects the overall generic richness, abundance and diversity of ant communities, whether the relative importance of ant functional groups is altered by fire, and to what extent fire changes vegetation structure. To investigate any effects that fire may have on ant communities in the Sky Islands region, we established four plots, each with arrays of six pitfall traps in adjacent burned and unburned habitat, at the sites of two different fires. Measures of vegetation height, density, coverage and richness were taken at all sample points. Based on preliminary examination of the data, ant genera richness and abundance are significantly higher in burned areas, and this trend is the same at both fire sites. Changes in generic composition occur between unburned and burned sites, implying that disturbance regimes such as fire may be important in determining community composition of Sky Island ant communities.