Lepisiota canescens is a species of ant in the subfamily Formicinae which is native to southern Ethiopia.

[1] The supercolonies were first discovered by a team of myrmecologists from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

D. Magdalena Sorger, a member of the team, has stated that the discovery of these species is significant for two (and now various) reasons.

First, cases of finding super colonies are extremely rare, with only around 20 worldwide species having the ability to do so.

What is even more frightening about this fact, is that L. canescens is now far more invasive and destructive than its southern and western African counterparts L. capensis and L. angolensis.