Forced Reeling of Bombyx moriSilk:Separating Behavior and Processing Conditions.

Controlledreeling is a powerful tool to investigate the detailsof silk processing. However, consistent forced reeling of silkwormsis hindered by the significant degree of behaviorally induced variationcaused by the animal. This paper proposes silkworm paralysis as anovel method to control the animal and thus in vivo spinning conditions.Using these methods, we achieve low and consistent reeling forcesduring the collection of over 500 m of individual silk fiber whilemonitoring filament variability, morphology, and properties. Noveltechniques to measure the irregular silk cross-sectional areas leadto the more accurate calculation of the true engineering values andmechanical property variation of individual silk fibers. Combiningcontrolled reeling and accurate thread measurement techniques allowsus to present the relative contributions of processing and behaviorin the performance envelope of Bombyx morisilk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]