Dan Bunker

TraitNet RCN: Foster the curation, discovery, and sharing of ecological trait data

TraitNet Ontology Development

• NJIT & Columbia– Dan Bunker, Shahid Naeem, Farshid Ahrestani

• NCEAS: – Mark Schildhauer, Matt Jones, Shawn Bowers

• CNRS, France: – Eric Garnier, Marie-Angelique Laporte, Isabelle

Mougenot

• Many additional ecologists and information scientists

2

Plant Functional Trait Ontology

• Why? To facilitate recycling of ecological trait data

• What? Functional traits == phenotypes!– Often quantitative: Leaf Mass, Maximum

photosynthetic rates

• Tools? Protégé 4, OWL, OBOE plug-in • Needs? Examples of implementations

to reify/curate/serve/query triples

3

OBOE: Extensible Observation Ontology

Madin, Bowers, Schildhauer, and Jones 2008 TREE

Leaf

Mass