1980] 
Young — Ecology of Cicadas 
Fig. 3. The forest habitat at the top of the ravine, and above the Sarapiqui 
roadcut. The cicada Fidicina n.sp. is abundant here. 
most tree plots on the slopes were 25m 2 . The twelve tree plots gave a 
total habitat area of about 484m 2 sampled for nymphal skins several 
times and a total of 6,957m 2 ) of river-edge forest sampled as well 
(total sample area of 7,441m 2 ). The tree plots were widely scattered 
with the closest being no less than 30 meters apart. The sample 
included the hill-top forest above the Sarapiqui roadcut (Fig. 3) as 
well as the forest habitat to either side of the secondary road down 
into the ravine (Fig. 4). A census consisted of making an exhaustive 
collection of all cicada nymphal skins found within each plot, 
including those attached to plants and tree trunks and those lying in 
the ground litter. The contents were placed into a plastic bag and 
labeled appropriately. Later the skins were determined to species 
and sex. The nymphal skins of the cicadas studied were readily 
separated to species in my field samples on the basis of marked 
differences in size, color, and body profile. Skins were matched with 
