Semantics of phenotype annotations

From phenoscape
Revision as of 00:51, 29 August 2011 by Jim Balhoff (talk | contribs)

In Phenoscape data annotation, we typically model a phenotype as a class expression describing a set of organisms, for example 'has_part some (caudal fin and bearer_of some bifurcated)'. How precisely this phenotype class is related to a taxon has important consequences for the resulting inferences and thus queries for phenotypes across the taxonomy.

This page assumes that taxa are represented as OWL individuals, and the taxonomy is a tree of member_of/has_member relationships. For example:

Ictalurus_punctatus member_of Ictalurus member_of Ictaluridae member_of Siluriformes