**1. Introduction**

Over a large area of the Amazon rainforest, extending from the Brazilian state of *Para* to the south-east of *Peru* (*Madre de Dios* department), passing through *Surinam*, one can observe curious clay buildings, having the shape of turrets, or chimneys (**Figure 1a**), with a height of 20 to 40 cm and an internal diameter at their base of about 2 cm (**Figure 1b**). The turret surmounts a vertical well (**Figure 1c**) with a depth of up to about a meter, i.e. the thickness of the fertile soil layer. The surface inside the turret is perfectly smooth (**Figure 1d**).

Each turret is the visible part of the pupal burrow of the cicada *Guyalna chlorogena* (**Figure 2**), or *Fidicina chlorogena*, according to its old taxon [1]. Endoscopic exploration made it possible to observe the nymph in the well (**Figure 3**) and to verify that each burrow is occupied by a single nymph, male or female [2], which builds its turret (between December and February) a few months before moulting into a winged imago, and reproducing (between late July and early September).

Our research was conducted at the *Museu da Amazônia* (MUSA)1 , installed in the *Botanical Garden of Manaus*, on the edge of the *Adolfo Ducke Reserve* (**Figure 4**), in the northern area of Manaus, State of Amazonas, Brazil, in an area of about twenty hectares, around 59° 56′ 21.5" WO and 3° 0′ 19.7" S. A total of more than 250 burrows were observed, between November 2013 and September 2019. About 60 buildings

<sup>1</sup> Av. Margarita, 6305 - Cidade de Deus, Manaus - AM, 69088-265, Brésil.

#### **Figure 1.** *(a) View of a turret. (b) Turret removed. (c) Entrance to the well. (d) Inner surface of the summit.*

were monitored daily. The observations made up to 2016 have been published [2]. The results obtained subsequently will be the subject of a second publication (Béguin, Gama and Ribamar Mesquita Ferreira, to be published).
