Review: Biogeographic and environmental history of Fagus and beech‐dominant forest in Japan

Abstract

There is a rich beech fossil record in Japan dating from the Paleogene to the Holocene, which allows for the continuous tracing of the evolutionary history of the genus and allows us to understand the environmental background that facilitated the genus to obtain a dominant state in present-day forests. In addition to the temperate climate, the oceanic climate was an important factor in controlling beech distribution and dominance in the forests in Japan. With the cooling climate, beech species began expanding their distribution in the Northern Hemisphere in the middle Eocene and appeared in Japan in the late middle Eocene. Beech species became dominant in forests in Japan during the Miocene along with the development of the oceanic climate by the opening of the Sea of Japan and with the strengthening of the monsoon. Fagus crenata appeared until the Late Pliocene and became dominant in forests in central Japan in the late Early Pleistocene coinciding with the onsetting inflow of the Tsushima Warm Current to the Sea of Japan in interglacial stages. During the full-glacial stages since the late Middle Pleistocene, the cold and dry climate caused by the strong winter monsoon limited the distribution of beeches into refugia at humid places, including the inland. During the deglaciation since ca 19 ka, the beech population began to grow and its distribution expanded, controlled by the development of the Tsushima Warm Current, as well as latitudinal and altitudinal temperature clines.

Preface: Listen to the voices of local beech forests: An ecological and evolutionary conception of beech under phylogenetic and environmental constraints

“…Currently, many ecological studies are shedding light on local beech forests. If we consider various beech forests within a local region, the current populations exist as a result of adapting to different habitats over the tens of millions of years since the first occurrence of Fagus (Hara, 2023; Momohara & Ito, 2023), even under evolutionary constraints. This special feature includes papers about the plasticity and local adaptation of local beech trees (Kabeya & Han, 2023; Rooney et al, 2023; Sugimoto & Ishida, 2023; Takahashi et al, 2023).…”

“…One of the first papers to reveal the distributional changes of beech by pollen analyses was published by Tsukada (1982a) along with another important paper on this species by the same author (Tsukada, 1982b). The fossil data have been continuously updated, and here in this special feature, the latest review of the biogeographic and environmental history of Fagus in Japanese Archipelago is presented (Momohara & Ito, 2023).…”