Earth is dead. An ark ship full of frozen humans escaped. They found a planet, but it’s guarded

And also the home of a race of rapidly evolving sapient spiders

And ants

An ant is not sapient but an ant colony is....capable of adapting itself to new situations at a rate that implies intelligence, if not any sense of self or wisdom

the ant intelligence is not like anything any species had on Earth

“individual ants cannot innovate, but that the colony can—in a strange way—make what appear to be informed decisions.“

“Application of force and reward, a narrowing of the colony’s viable options so that the most advantageous is the one the spiders intend it to choose, can lead to a colony accepting boundaries on its territory and its place in the world, and even to become a productive partner.”

they don't psychically share a consciousness, it's the social structure of the colony itself that produces something indistinguishable from sapience

Something indistinguishable from intelligence

I don’t think sapience is the right word

But enough intelligence to discover metal

And......radios?

Unfortunately, I fear that this might be a better long term survival strategy than the general intelligence of the spiders