Old pea aphids

You are a post-reproductive pea aphid. You have spent a long and happy life sucking the juices out of a pea plant. As the plant has grown, so has your large and clonal family, who you love as you love yourself, because genetically they are self. You were born with all your daughters already developing in your ovaries, and now the last one is out, and already reproducing, and what are you going to do with yourself? You may be only halfway thorough your lifespan. What to do with the remaining weeks? Pompano Beach is out, too many insecticides.

The obvious answer if you are a natural selection minded aphid is you'd like to help all the clones of yourself you've created to grow fast, live long and reproduce a lot. But how? Reproductive adults contribute more to the growth of the colony than do the young'uns, so throughout your reproductive lifespan, you've tried hard to stay at the center of the colony, where there is a touch of protection from predators. So maybe now you should move to the edge? If a hungry predator comes along, you can martyr yourself for the good of the clone. You don't have any chemical defenses or strong sharp pokey bits, and your kick is frankly rather unimpressive, but maybe if the predator eats you, it will allow time for your great-great-grandkids to escape, or at least make the predator full enough that it eats fewer of them. And maybe, just maybe, when that predator comes, you will be brave enough to just stay put and get eaten for the team.

Or perhaps rather than just sitting around waiting to get eaten, you can help to feed the family? Aphids suck sap, so if you could either put some chemical into the plant, or create enough suction, you could stimulates flow to that part of the plant where your family resides. Your young might grow faster or start reproducing sooner.

I mean, I don't really know. No post-reproductive aphid has ever sought my advice before. I'll do some experiments and get back to you.