“…Of particular interest in the retrieved cores are polycystine radiolarians, which are siliceous microorganisms that inhabit shallow, intermediate and deep waters (e.g., Renz, 1976;Anderson, 1983;Kling, 1979;Kling and Boltovskoy, 1995;Nimmergut and Abelmann, 2002;Okazaki et al, 2004;Suzuki and Not, 2015;Matsuzaki et al, 2016). Their skeletons composed of amorphous silica are generally well-preserved and abundant in the seafloor of the North Pacific, and the high levels of radiolarian preservation and abundance in deep-sea sediments of this region have facilitated numerous paleoceanographic and biostratigraphic studies (e.g., Hays, 1970;Kling, 1973;Foreman, 1975;Morley et al, 1982;Motoyama, 1996;Pisias et al, 1997;Matul et al, 2002;Kamikuri et al, 2004Kamikuri et al, , 2007Matul and Abelmann, 2005;Itaki et al, 2012;Matsuzaki et al, 2014aMatsuzaki et al, -c, 2015aKamikuri, 2017). According to onboard data, radiolarians were very rare in the Pliocene-Miocene sediments collected at Site U1417 (Jaeger et al, 2014).…”