Artisans Angkor
When the worms have grown enough, they are put in baskets. From there, they will spin their cocoons in five days and will produce about three hundreds meters of silk each. The cocoons are then put in sunlight to avoid them undergoing their metamorphosis into mature moths. However, 20% of them reach the breeding process and the female moths will lay and hatch its eggs within nine to twelve days.
The cocoons are soaked in hot water in order to soften the sericin (also known as silk gum) which coat the fibres and stick the cocoons together. Silk threads are then unwound and reeled together to produce a single thread. Weavers at Angkor Silk Farm make both raw silk and fine silk that do not have the same texture at all. Sericin has not been completely removed from raw silk threads, which will give a rougher texture to the fabric at the end.
Syllis prolifera
"S. prolifera" is a "stolonate" worm and has an unusual life cycle. When the worm has reached a length of about forty segments, the posterior portion of the worm develops into a stolon inside which the gonads mature. The stolon is either female (pale orange) or male (whitish) and becomes a storage receptacle for the eggs or sperm. Breeding is regulated by the phases of the moon, and when the breeding period arrives, the stolon becomes detached and joins others to swarm in the water column, in a process known as "epitoky". Here the gametes are released and the stolon dies. Meanwhile, the parent worm remains on the seabed and starts to grow a new stolon which is ready for release some 28 days later.