Towards a thesaurus of plant characteristics: an ecological contribution

GARNIER, ERIC; STAHL, ULRIKE; LAPORTE, MARIE-ANGELIQUE; KATTGE, JENS; MOUGENOT, ISABELLE; KÜHN, INGOLF; LAPORTE, BAPTISTE; AMIAUD, BERNARD; AHRESTANI, FARSHID S.; BÖNISCH, GERHARD; BUNKER, DANIEL E.; CORNELISSEN, J.H.C.; DÍAZ, SANDRA; ENQUIST, BRIAN J.; GACHET, SOPHIE; JAUREGUIBERRY, PEDRO; KLEYER, MICHAEL; LAVOREL, SANDRA; MAICHER, LUTZ; PÉREZ-HARGUINDEGUY, NATALIA; POORTER, HENDRIK; SCHILDHAUER, MARK; SHIPLEY, BILL; VIOLLE, CYRILLE; WEIHER, EVAN; WIRTH, CHRISTIAN; WRIGHT, IAN J.; KLOTZ, STEFAN

JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY (PRINT)

WILEY-BLACKWELL PUBLISHING, INC

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2016

0022-0477

1. Ecological research produces a tremendous amount of data, but the diversity in scales and topicscovered and the ways in which studies are carried out result in large numbers of small, idiosyncraticdata sets using heter ogeneous terminologies. Such heterogeneity can be attributed, in part, to a lackof standards for acquiring, organizing and describing data. Here, we propose a terminologicalresource, aThesaurus Of Plant characteristics (TOP), whose aim is to harmonize and formalize con-cepts for plant c haracteristics widely used in ecology.2. TOP concentrates on two types of plant characteristics: traits and environmental associations. Itbuilds on previous initiatives for several aspects: (i) characteristics are designed following the entity-quality (EQ) model (a characteristic is modelled as the ?Quality? of an ?Entity? ) used in the context of Open Biological Ontologies; (ii) when ever possible, the Entities and Qualities aretaken from existing terminology standards, mainly the Plant Ontology (PO) and Phenotypic QualityOntology (PATO) ontologies; and (iii) whenever a characteristic already has a definition, if appropri-ate, it is reused and refere nced. The development of TOP, which complies with semantic web princi-ples, was carried out through the involvement of experts from both the ecology and the semantic sresearch communities. Regular updates of TOP are planned, based on community feedback andinvolvement.3. TOP provides names, definitions, units, synonyms and related terms for about 850 plant charac-teristics. TOP is available online (www.top-thesaurus.org), and can be browsed using an alphabeticallist of characteristics , a hierarchic al tree of characteristics, a faceted and a free-text search, andthrough an Application Programming Interface.4. Synthesis. Harmonizing definitions of concepts, as proposed by TOP, forms the basis for betterintegrati on of data across heterogeneous data sets and terminologies, thereby increasing the potentialfor data reuse. It also allows enhanced scientific synthesis. TOP therefore has the potential toimprove research and communication not only within the field of ecology, but also in related fieldswith interest in plant functioning and distribution.