Chapter # THE ONTOLOGY OF ECOSYSTEMS

Motivation: The ontology of a knowledge domain is a set of statements that are true, no matter what circumstances may arise in that knowledge domain. The aim of this work is to develop a formal ontological description of the structural and functional organization of ecosystems (which all together comprise the knowledge domain) with due regard to their possible dynamics/development/evolution. Since ecology is an essentially synthetic science (Begon et al., 1989; Margalef, 1992), multidisciplinary research is a necessity. However, what happens is that individuals working in different fields stick to their respective paradigms and terminology, which brings up a terminology mess and hampers comparison (Sergeev et al., 2006). Providing a uniform format for description and comparison, this formalization was originally developed in response to a need of developing a strategy for the creation of a database for an all-round description of biosystems (Miginsky et al., 2006). Now that a major portion of this task has been completed, the ontology can be used for navigation in this database. Results: The definition of an econetwork is provided; the ontology of their micro- and macrodynamics is described. The ontology provides eco- and gene networks linkage