ICBO_2018_75: ECOCORE: An ontology for core ecological concepts

The ontologies in the biological and biomedical domain represent entities from a broad spectrum of the life sciences such as molecules, diseases, phenotypes, and environments. However, until now, ontologies representing ecological concepts, such as trophic modes like autotrophy and insectivory, have been missing. In response to the needs of aggregators such as the Encyclopedia of Life and DataONE, we have developed an ontology of core ecological concepts, ECOCORE. The initial focus of development for ECOCORE is trophic dynamics. An example demonstrating this initial focus is the autotroph class, which is a subclass of organism. It is equivalent to organism and (‘capable of’ some autotrophy). Autotrophy is a process. ECOCORE development calls on classes from many OBO ontologies, but involves specifically important collaborations with the Environment Ontology, the Behavior Ontology, and the Relations Ontology. ECOCORE development is open to community participation at the GitHub site https://github.com/EcologicalSemantics/ecocore. This presentation will describe ECOCORE and show some of its uses.