Re: Species Concept Mapping RDF fixes and question, should the species be represented as a class? Class SpeciesConcept => Class Species Cougar

On 2 Dec 2009, at 16:36, Antoine Isaac wrote:
>> On 2 Dec 2009, at 02:40, Peter DeVries wrote:
>>> I was thinking that the species itself should be a class so that  
>>> individuals
>>> of that species would be instances of that class.
>>>
>>> Probably another skos:Concept class.
>>>
>>> So an individual species concept class like that for the Cougar  
>>> would be an
>>> instance of a skos:Concept (SpeciesConcept) class and also be a  
>>> skos:Concept
>>> class (Cougar) of it's own.
>>>
>>> Individual animals would be instances of the skos:Concept class  
>>> (Cougar).
>> Two issues.
>> 1. I don't think that individual animals should be typed as  
>> skos:Concepts, but rather as something like ex:Specimen or  
>> ex:Animal. So, the Cougar class should be a subclass of ex:Specimen  
>> or ex:Animal rather than of skos:Concept. In the words of Bernard  
>> Vatant, skos:Concepts are "library business objects" (or  
>> "taxonomist business objects"?); Bob the cougar in the zoo next  
>> door doesn't seem to fit that definition.
>
> Well, couldn't your questioning put the other way round? I thought  
> that Peter was indeed starting from items that are very much  
> "taxonomist business objects", hence very easy to represent as  
> concepts.

One simply has to be aware that skos:Concepts in a skos:ConceptScheme  
are not the same as the real-world entities they stand for, and Peter  
has to be clear which one he is talking about.

> And in fact, while I understand that it is not very intuitive to  
> have Bob the cougar as a skos:Concept (even though it is technically  
> allowed), I see less problems for dealing this way with the class of  
> cougars...

Mentioning that you see less problems without going into any detail is  
not exactly useful. I see more problems.

Best,
Richard




>
> Best,
>
> Antoine
>
>> 2. I'm not sure if it's wise to use the same URI for the Cougar  
>> "concept" and the Cougar "class". I don't think that this "punning"  
>> is against any spec, but it will cause endless head-scratching  
>> among potential users of your data. It would be more  
>> straightforward to mint a separate URI for the class, and relating  
>> it 1:1 to the species concept using an appropriate property  
>> (there's probably one in UMBEL; if not, mint your own -- maybe  
>> "speciesClass"). Since you own the URI space anyway, minting new  
>> URIs would be cheap.
>> This kind of punning between concepts, things and classes is an  
>> interesting issue, and I'm afraid that it's not yet well  
>> understood. Avoiding it puts you on the safe side.
>> That being said, can you talk a bit about your motivation for  
>> wanting to re-use the same URI?
>> Best,
>> Richard
>>>
>>> This should work with OWL2 but I don't know how well it will work  
>>> with the
>>> LOD.
>>>
>>> Also I created a VERY preliminary OWL document that would contain  
>>> a much
>>> more complete representation of the species.
>>>
>>> My thoughts are that these OWL documents would be used to help  
>>> determine
>>> what specimens are instances of what species concept.
>>> The goal would be to provide an OWL document for those who need a  
>>> more
>>> complete description of what we mean by the URI, while
>>> also providing a much lighter RDF representation that could be  
>>> used for
>>> concept mapping etc.
>>>
>>> However, I don't know if I am going about this in the right way.
>>>
>>> Below are my VERY preliminary examples of what these OWL documents  
>>> might
>>> look like.
>>>
>>> The example has some attributes that I thought should be included  
>>> in a
>>> species document, but it does not have everything that would like to
>>> eventually include.
>>>
>>> http://rdf.taxonconcept.org/owlses/v6n7p/2009-12-01.owl
>>>
>>> Doc's at http://rdf.taxonconcept.org/owlses/v6n7p/owl_doc/index.html
>>>
>>> The common classes etc, would eventually be moved to a separate  
>>> ontology
>>> that would be imported into each individual species ontology.
>>>
>>> And these ontologies will need to be fixed so that they work  
>>> together, I
>>> don't think they do right now.
>>>
>>> Thanks in Advance, :-)
>>>
>>> - Pete
>>> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>>> Pete DeVries
>>> Department of Entomology
>>> University of Wisconsin - Madison
>>> 445 Russell Laboratories
>>> 1630 Linden Drive
>>> Madison, WI 53706
>>> GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
>>> About the GeoSpecies Knowledge Base
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>

Received on Thursday, 3 December 2009 09:34:08 UTC