Tetrastigma

Tetrastigma is a genus of plants in the grape family, Vitaceae. The plants are lianas that climb with tendrils and have palmately compound leaves. Plants are dioecious, with separate male and female plants; female flowers are characterized by their four-lobed stigmas. The species are found in subtropical and tropical regions of Asia, Malesia, and Australia, where they grow in primary rainforest, gallery forest and monsoon forest and moister woodland. Species of this genus are notable as being the sole hosts of parasitic plants in the family Rafflesiaceae, one of which, Rafflesia arnoldii, produces the largest single flower in the world. Tetrastigma is the donor species for horizontal gene transfer to Sapria and Rafflesia due to multiple gene theft events.

Tetrastigma

Wan Nuur Fatiha Wan Zakaria Vinayaraj Forest and Kim Starr Mark Marathon Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Sits inside
VitaceaePBDB
Diet
"photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae

Time the record covers

At least 44 million years on record.

The record covers at least 56 Mya to 11.63 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 66 Mya to 5.333 Mya.

Late Cretaceous — about 0 of 36 occurrencesPaleocene — about 1 of 36 occurrencesPaleoceneEocene — about 7 of 36 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 36 occurrencesMiocene — about 28 of 36 occurrencesMiocenePliocene — about 0 of 36 occurrences67–65 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences65–63 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences63–61 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences61–59 Mya — about 0.3 occurrences59–57 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences57–55 Mya — about 1 occurrence55–52 Mya — about 2 occurrences52–50 Mya — about 2 occurrences50–48 Mya — about 2 occurrences48–46 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences38–36 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences36–34 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences21–19 Mya — about 2 occurrences19–17 Mya — about 2 occurrences17–15 Mya — about 4 occurrences15–13 Mya — about 6 occurrences13–10 Mya — about 5 occurrences10–8.3 Mya — about 4 occurrences8.3–6.2 Mya — about 4 occurrences6.2–4.1 Mya — about 2 occurrences56 Mya11.63 Mya67 Mya4 Mya

36 occurrences of Tetrastigma on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

36 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Found in

7 formations

London Clay — 50.78°N, 0.65°WBagshot — 50.70°N, 2.03°WMotojuku — 36.25°N, 138.75°EHeadon Beds — 50.75°N, 1.60°WTienen — 50.78°N, 5.08°EWulonggu — 47.52°N, 87.08°EShanwang — 36.55°N, 118.71°E

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The named rock units Tetrastigma has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 26 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.

Tetrastigma and its relatives

Miocene

Where Tetrastigma and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

353 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Tetrastigma, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

10 references

Each of the 36 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Tetrastigma

Credit
Wan Nuur Fatiha Wan Zakaria Vinayaraj Forest and Kim Starr Mark Marathon Krzysztof Ziarnek, Kenraiz
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Tetrastigma was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itVitaceae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Planchon 1887