A hymenopterists’ guide to the Hymenoptera Anatomy Ontology: utility, clarification, and future directions

By

Seltmann, Katja
Yoder, Matthew
Miko, Istvan
Forshage, Mattias
Bertone, Matthew
Agosti, Donat
Austin, A. D. (Andrew D.)
Balhoff, James
Borowiec, Marek
Brady, Seán G.
Broad, Gavin R.
Brothers, Denis J.
Burks, Roger A.
Buffington, Matthew L.
Campbell, Heather
Dew, Kelly
Ernst, Andrew
Fernandez-Triana, Jose
Gates, Michael William 1969-
Gibson, Gary A. P. 1950-
Jennings, John
Johnson, Norman F.
Karlsson, Dave
Kawada, Ricardo
Krogmann, Lars
Kula, Robert R
Mullins, Patricia
Ohl, Michael
Rasmussen, Claus, 1972-
Ronquist, Fredrik
Schulmeister, Susanne
Sharkey, Michael J.
Talamas, Elijah
Tucker, Erika
Vilhelmsen, Lars
Ward, Philip S., 1952-
Wharton, Robert (Robert Alan)
Deans, Andrew R.

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2012

Original Publication

Journal of Hymenoptera research

Volume

27

Pages

67-88

Subjects

biodiversity informatics , Morphology , URI

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Washington, D.C International Society of Hymenopterists

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/jhr.27.2961

 

Abstract

Hymenoptera exhibit an incredible diversity of phenotypes, the result of ~240 million years of evolution and the primary subject of more than 250 years of research. Here we describe the history, development, and utility of the Hymenoptera Anatomy Ontology (HAO) and its associated applications. These resources are designed to facilitate accessible and extensible research on hymenopteran phenotypes. Outreach with the hymenopterist community is of utmost importance to the HAO project, and this paper is a direct response to questions that arised from project workshops. In a concerted attempt to surmount barriers of understanding, especially regarding the format, utility, and development of the HAO, we discuss the roles of homology, “preferred terms”, and “structural equivalency”. We also outline the use of Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs) and posit that they are a key element necessary for increasing the objectivity and repeatability of science that references hymenopteran anatomy. Pragmatically, we detail a mechanism (the “URI table”) by which authors can use URIs to link their published text to the HAO, and we describe an associated tool (the “Analyzer”) to derive these tables. These tools, and others, are available through the HAO Portal website (http://portal.hymao.org). We conclude by discussing the future of the HAO with respect to digital publication, cross-taxon ontology alignment, the advent of semantic phenotypes, and community-based curation.