Abstract
The study of palynomorphs based on pollen and fern spore assemblages and their ecological characteristics has a long history of more than 100 years. In the history of this kind of the research, much attention has been paid to palynomorphs other than pollen and fern spores. However, the majority of these palynomorphs are dormant cells including resting eggs, hypnozygotes and resting spores (cyst) of various aquatic organisms, and their morphology is markedly different from that of their parent organisms. This has often prevented the identification of the parental organisms of these palynomorphs preserved in sediments. This paper focuses on the components of the aquatic palynomorph assemblage in the Quaternary sediments of Japan - mainly in the surface sediments of coastal waters. These aquatic palynomorphs included dinoflagellate cysts, raphidophyte Chattonella cysts, prasinophyte phycoma, resistant cells and colonies of green algae (primary producers), ciliate lorica and cysts, benthic foraminifera linings, resting eggs of cladocera and copepoda, testate amoebae, turbellarian egg capsules, jaws of annelids, and acritarchs (primary and low-level consumers). With the taxa to which they belong to higher taxonomic ranks, the description focuses on morphological and ecological characteristics and the fossil record. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the palaeoecology of aquatic palynomorph assemblages, which aims to reveal aspects of past climatic changes and geological events that can be interpreted from the aquatic fossil palynomorph assemblages.
