Adults live in the intestine of elasmobranch fishes and release eggs. If an egg containing a coracidium, or a coracidium that has already hatched, is eaten by a suitable crustacean first intermediate host, the oncosphere will burrow into the body cavity and develop into a procercoid. When eaten by a second intermediate host fish, the procercoid develops into a plerocercoid. The life cycle is completed upon ingestion by an elasmobranch.
The life cycle of most trypanorhynchs as sketchy because of the difficulty of confirming life cycles of marine parasites experimentally. The elucidation of trypanorhynch life cycles is a bit easier than for other marine groups because the complex scolex of the adult is also developed in the plerocercoid stage, so at least those larvae can be identified and the range of hosts in which they occur can be determined.