The Supercolony Wars: An Insect Epic (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798259180062)

In 1907, a cargo ship docked in California carrying, among other things, a small colony of Argentine ants. Nobody noticed.

Within a century those ants had formed the largest cooperative supercolony ever recorded: a single network stretching 600 miles of coastline. They systematically eliminated nearly every native ant species in their path.

The Supercolony Wars is a novel about that invasion, told entirely from the inside. There are almost no human characters.

The voices belong to an ancient oak grove speaking in the slow language of centuries. To the Argentine queen, disoriented in the dark of a shipping crate. To native harvester and carpenter queens as they lose ground, adapt, and find ways to persist against a force that should have erased them.

It's a strange book. It asks you to inhabit minds that have no interest in us: collective, chemical, patient, ruthless. And to find something recognizable there anyway.

The science is real. The Argentine supercolony exists. What the ants experienced is imagined.

For readers of Richard Powers, Peter Wohlleben, and Jeff VanderMeer.