It's not unusual for an outbreak to kill an entire colony of wild prairie dogs.

NPR: Prairie Dogs Yield Bioterrorism Insight

The team selected wild ants from the main European super-colony, from another smaller one called the Catalonian super-colony which lives on the Iberian coast, the Californian super-colony and from the super-colony in west Japan, as well as another in Kobe, Japan.

BBC: Earth News - Ant mega-colony takes over world