Embryos develop into a free swimming larva that looks like a tiny adult; they develop a shell while planktonic.
Fertilisation takes place externally and the embryos float for a few days before developing into free swimming larvae.
The resulting swimming larva enters a canal of the central cavity and is expelled with the exhalant current.
Their eggs produce ciliated swimming larvae, and the life cycle has one or two hosts.
Eggs hatch into free swimming larvae with 5 zoeal stages and 1 postlarval or megalopa stage.
Under natural circumstances the survival from free swimming larva to 75 mm pike is around 5 percent.
The swimming larvae of a thousand kinds of creatures floated on the sluggish surface or crawled over the bottom.
The species is known only by its free swimming larvae.
