From Snodgrass to a modern encyclopedia of insect anatomy, with an ontology of the insect skeletomuscular system in-between

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Presenting Author(s)

IM

Istvan Miko

University of New Hampshire
Durham, New Hampshire

Co-Author(s)

JG

Jennifer C. Girón

Museum of Texas Tech University
Lubbock, Texas
LM

Luis Antonio Gonzales Montana

Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Bogota, Cundinamarca, Colombia

Ontologies have been around biodiversity research in the last decade and were mostly viewed as a potential toolset for creating parsable and queryable anatomy descriptions. Almost as side products, ontologies also have been used as online encyclopedias. Perhaps the most well known multi-species ontology is the Hymenoptera Anatomy Ontology, that has been used as a reference point for morphological terms across insecta (REF). However, this ontology has multiple issues that makes it less useful for serving as a general insect vocabulary. Its definitions are static and it contains largely Hymenoptera specific elements. With the introduction of the Anatomy Ontology of Insect Skeletomuscular System (AISM) we provide a root ontology and a semantic framework that accelerates and assists the development of order-specific ontologies. Concepts of AISM are restricted to the skeleto-muscular system, specializations of the single layer epithelium and acellular cuticle, and adjacent skeletal muscle system. The AISM contains fully logic and queryable definitions and follows the sensu system to handle homonymies.