I'm reminded of moss sex which is sort of like if your sperm or eggs went off and got a job an an apartment and a social life and only bothered to spin up a full-blown human being for sexy times. Both forms being multicellular and alternating (see: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternation_of_generations).
I guess that's a bit like the caterpillar and the butterfly, though I think they have the same ploidy.
Except for Portuguese Man-O-War, it's not an alternation but the multiple forms all existing at once. Still pretty weird but I think there's actually more precedent for this kind of thing than initially comes to mind: switch/case blocks really high up in the genomic call stack.
I'm a bit disappointed to learn that these "separate" animals are genetically identical. When I first heard this described I thought it was like lichen where cells from multiple kingdoms are each reproducing in tandem and forming structures that neither could make happen independently: Like if your gut biome moved out and figured out how to bootstrap enough of a body to get its own job and apartment and...
I guess that's a bit like the caterpillar and the butterfly, though I think they have the same ploidy.
Except for Portuguese Man-O-War, it's not an alternation but the multiple forms all existing at once. Still pretty weird but I think there's actually more precedent for this kind of thing than initially comes to mind: switch/case blocks really high up in the genomic call stack.
I'm a bit disappointed to learn that these "separate" animals are genetically identical. When I first heard this described I thought it was like lichen where cells from multiple kingdoms are each reproducing in tandem and forming structures that neither could make happen independently: Like if your gut biome moved out and figured out how to bootstrap enough of a body to get its own job and apartment and...