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

On Dec 1, 2009, at 9:14 PM, Peter DeVries wrote:

> Hi Bob,
>
> I came about this after it was suggested to me that a species might  
> be best represented as a class.
>
> It also occurred to me that an ontology that works to describe  
> mosquito species would probably be very different than an ontology  
> used to describe members of the cat family.
>
> What I thought was that there are times when you want to treat a  
> species as an instance and other time you want to treat it as a class.

In any civilized ontology language, a class is an instance. Use OWL 2  
from now on.

Pat

>
> Thinking out loud here.
>
> The lightweight representations shown in this example http://rdf.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p.rdf
> are used when you just need something simple that gives you the  
> basic information and maps concepts.
>
> However, it really does not document what you mean by the URI. By  
> that I mean, it does not provide any information that will allow you  
> to
> determine what species concept you should apply for a given specimen.
>
> For that you will need something more complex, that can be loaded as  
> needed. Something more like this representation.
>
> http://rdf.taxonconcept.org/owlses/v6n7p/2009-12-01.owl (Initially  
> an individual file made with Protege)
>
> How would these be used?
>
> Lets say that an individual Cougar was observed within the  
> boundaries of the state of Wisconsin.
>
> That individual is an instance, however, from that you should be  
> able to reason that the species
>
> http://rdf.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p
>
> was observed within the State of Wisconsin.
>
> This should allow you to then run queries on species observed in a  
> particular geographic location as shown in these examples.
>
> http://about.geospecies.org/sparql.xhtml
>
> You should also be able to make other assertions at the species  
> concept level based on data from collections of individuals.
>
> For example, the mosquito Culex territans femalesfeedPrimarily on  
> Anurans (frogs and toads)
>
> How do I determine if the cat I have captured is Puma concolor vs  
> Puma yagouaroundi? (or another less obvious example)
>
> See  http://rdf.taxonconcept.org/ses/v6n7p and  http://rdf.taxonconcept.org/ses/Hq5OE
>
> and from there get the related owl documents. The owl documents  
> should provide some information that will allow you to determine
> which concept is the best match for the captured specimen.
>
> At least that is what I would like to do. :-)
>
> - Pete
>
> On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 8:30 PM, Bob Morris <morris.bob@gmail.com>  
> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 8:40 PM, Peter DeVries  
> <pete.devries@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Hi LOD'ers,
> >[...]
> > 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).
> >[...]
>
> Umm, if every species concept is a class, about how many classes, in
> your estimate,  would there be in a comprehensive ontology?
>
> --Bob
>
>
>
> --
> Robert A. Morris
> Professor of Computer Science (nominally retired)
> UMASS-Boston
> 100 Morrissey Blvd
> Boston, MA 02125-3390
> Associate, Harvard University Herbaria
> email: ram@cs.umb.edu
> web: http://bdei.cs.umb.edu/
> web: http://etaxonomy.org/FilteredPush
> http://www.cs.umb.edu/~ram
> phone (+1)617 287 6466
>
>
>
> -- 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
> 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
> ------------------------------------------------------------

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