Bombyx mori Bombyx mori The silkworm is the larva or caterpillar of the domestic silkmoth, Bombyx mori (Latin: "silkworm of the mulberry tree"). It is an economically important insect, being a primary producer of silk. A silkworm's preferred food is white mulberry leaves, though they may eat other mulberry species and even osage orange. Domestic silkmoths are closely dependent on humans for reproduction, as a result of millennia of selective breeding. Wild silkmoths are different from their domestic cousins as they have not been selectively bred; they are not as commercially viable in the production of silk. Sericulture, the practice of breeding
Crustacean larva (lecithotrophy). In species with normal development, eggs are roughly 1% of the size of the adult; in species with abbreviated development, and therefore more yolk in the eggs, the eggs may reach 1/9 of the adult's size. The post-larva of shrimp is called "parva", after the species "Acanthephyra parva" described by Henri Coutière, but which was later recognised as the larva of "Acanthephyra purpurea". In the marine lobsters, there are three larval stages, all similar in appearance. Freshwater crayfish embryos differ from those of other crustaceans in having 40 ectoteloblast cells, rather than around 19. The larvae show abbreviated development,