[0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-19248-8
I sometimes think about the selection pressures that lead to complex life cycles, like fig wasps. I find myself thinking about it naively, like one existed and the other grew into the niche. But, realistically, everything is changing (slowly) all the time. I just notice it for, say, influenza because their cycle time is so short.
The answer itself is interesting, but more remarkable to me is how doggedly people pursued it for so long. It seems so basic that they must reproduce the way other vertebrates do, and yet the lack of apparent organs was baffling.