 Complex life cycles of parasites and viruses, then, are not idiosyncratic but rather exemplars of complex, context-dependent developmental processes. Griesemer’s theoretical reorientation departs from the traditional idea of development as proceeding linearly from egg to embryo to adult. Instead, developmental capacities are properties of life cycles involving multiple organismal forms. This motivates a new theoretical concept: scaffolding interactions that bring a developing entity and aspects of the environment into such close association as to qualify as a new “hybrid” entity with new developmental potentialities (Griesemer 2014a). The original entity and environment are as “parents” to the new “hybrid” developmental system (e.g., HIV integrated into host genome vs. free virus and uninfected human cell/genome). Genes are demoted to “a special kind of evolved class of scaffolding developmental mechanisms” (2014b: 198).