Charybdaran

Splitting from its ancestor, the charybdaran has simplified its lifestyle to only its sexual phase and resulting offspring. Living in more temperate and tropical waters, they have grown with the great abundance of food available to them, with the females especially showing the greatest signs of this, being roughly three times the size of the more numerous males. They release planktonic eggs into the open water where they will soon hatch into tiny larvae who perform the role of zooplankton. They'll remain in the planktonic zone until they are old enough to form a cocoon and molt into their adult stage. The females, due to their sessile nature, are protected by a mild cytotoxin that damage the lining of the throat and mouth of most predators that attempt to eat them. Males lack this, and thus must rely on their numbers in order to avoid predation until they can find a mate and "fuse" with her. Until then they will scavenge corpses and detritus in order to sustain themselves.