Seems that this species is easy to maintain in a lab. The best way is to use artificial diet with agar. It's keeping enough humidity to allow you to let adults in the same vial for about 2 weeks. I used to have dry yeast in all my recipes, sometimes with malt, sometimes with maize flour. Adding some antibiotics sounds to be a good idea, to keep your vial fresh longer.

Here one of my recipes : corn meal, soya malt, yeast, sugar syrup, propionic

acid, agar and water.

Oviposition doesn't really need to be promoted... But I heard that some people add fruit extract or dye, to have the artificial diet red and enhance oviposition. But I never used it, and never need to use it !

Thanks very much Julien !.

I got no success rearing this species.

Maybe our proportions or some of our ingredients are wrong.

Any reference about your recipes?

Thanks again for your answer.

Addapted from french agronomy research institut (INRA) by CTIFL :

613,3 mL of distilled water

8g of agar

58,7g wheat flour

61,3g yeast powder

26,7g of sugar

2,5g of nipagine (methyl-4-hydroxybenzoate)

25,3mL of ethanol (70%)

Mix everything except nipagine and ethanol, heat, and add nipagine and ethanol when it cool down a little bit.

I was using the recipes with malt in my previous studies, but I can't find back the recipes, sorry... This one is quite strange with those perfect weights, but I was using it this summer, and that was working well ! I think the nipagine is more fungicide than bactericide, but I'm not sure. But it's destroy by heat, so add it after.