Relating taxa to phenotypes

In Phenoscape, we are annotating the phenotypes of species, as described in systematic literature. Because we are working within an ontological framework, we require a well-defined relation to link a taxon to a phenotype. This page describes the properties of, and issues related to, our proposed relation, exhibits.

Defining exhibits

Proposed definition

A taxon X exhibits phenotype Y if phenotype Y has been observed in some organism which is a member of taxon X.

Discussion

In an ideal world, all phenotype annotations would be directly to some organism specimen where the phenotype was observed. However, for various reasons direct specimen annotation is not feasible in practice.