DOI: 10.5061/dryad.7sqv9s4w6
title: Ontology for the Anatomy of the Insect SkeletoMuscular system

description: The spectacular radiation of insects has produced a stunning diversity of
 phenotypes. During the past 250 years, research on insect systematics has
 generated hundreds of terms for naming and comparing them. In its current
 form, this terminological diversity is presented in natural language and
 lacks formalization, which prohibits computer-assisted comparison using
 semantic web technologies. Here we propose a Model for Describing
 Cuticular Anatomical Structures (MoDCAS) which incorporates structural
 properties and positional relationships for standardized, consistent, and
 reproducible descriptions of arthropod phenotypes. We applied the MoDCAS
 framework in creating the ontology for the Anatomy of the Insect
 Skeleto-Muscular system (AISM). The AISM is the first general insect
 ontology that aims to cover all taxa by providing generalized, fully
 logical, and queryable, definitions for each term. It was built using the
 Ontology Development Kit (ODK), which maximizes interoperability with
 Uberon (Uberon multi-species anatomy ontology) and other basic ontologies,
 enhancing the integration of insect anatomy into the broader biological
 sciences. A template system for adding new terms, extending, and linking
 the AISM to additional anatomical, phenotypic, genetic, and chemical
 ontologies is also introduced. The AISM is proposed as the backbone for
 taxon-specific insect ontologies and has potential applications spanning
 systematic biology and biodiversity informatics, allowing users to (1) use
 controlled vocabularies and create semi-automated computer-parsable insect
 morphological descriptions; (2) integrate insect morphology into broader
 fields of research, including ontology-informed phylogenetic methods,
 logical homology hypothesis testing, evo-devo studies, and genotype to
 phenotype mapping; and (3) automate the extraction of morphological data
 from the literature, enabling the generation of large-scale phenomic data,
 by facilitating the production and testing of informatic tools able to
 extract, link, annotate, and process morphological data. This descriptive
 model and its ontological applications will allow for clear and
 semantically interoperable integration of arthropod phenotypes in
 biodiversity studies.
description: The ontology for the Anatomy of the Insect Skeleto-Muscular
 system (AISM.owl) and accompanying file system were generated using the
 Ontology Development Kit (ODK, Matentzoglu et al. 2022; https://github.com/INCATools/ontology-development-kit) and edited with Protégé version 5.5.0 (Musen 2015). All the files are available on GitHub at https://github.com/insect-morphology/aism. This dataset includes three files:<br>- aism.owl - The AISM ontology file in owl format<br>- aism.obo - The AISM ontology file in obo format<br>- AISM_template_examples.tsv - A tab delimited file used in the associated manuscript as an example of the use of templates for editing the AISM or run reasoning examples.
description: The file can be opened using a simple text editor or using
 Protégé version 5.5.0 (Musen, M.A. (2015) The Protégé project: a look back
 and a look forward. AI Matters 1, 4–12. https://doi.org/10.1145/2757001.2757003).