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I've just completed my second year of a zoology degree and am doing a summer project trying to rear Empididae for future lab cultures. Mostly I expect to be finding out what not to do, but at present I am searching for variables to include in my trials at different life stages.

Since empids haven't been successfully bred through all life stages yet, I am seeking suggestions relating to fly rearing in general, regardless of species. If you know something about rearing predacious flies, that is probably the most helpful to me. My questions are:

1. What induces flies to oviposit? I know that decapitation and CO2 can induce it. (Poor flies.) I also know that the presence of a suitable substrate will induce it, though in this case I'm not sure what that would ideally be.

2. What kinds of things are fed to larvae of predacious flies? Drosophila larvae seems the most obvious answer. Has anyone had better success with other foodstuffs?