Ontology-driven taxonomic work ows for Afrotropical Bees

This poster presents the results of an investigation into the use of ontology technologies to support taxonomy functions. Taxonomy is the science of naming and grouping biological organisms into a hierarchy. A core function of biological taxonomy is the classi cation and revised classi cation of biological organisms into an agreed upon taxonomic structure based on sets of shared characteristics. Recent developments in knowledge representation within Computer Science include the establishment of computational ontologies. Such ontologies are particularly well suited to support classi cation functions such as those used in biological taxonomy. Using a speci c genus of Afrotropical bees, this research project captured and represented the taxonomic knowledge base into an OWL2 ontology. In addition, the project used and extended available reasoning algorithms over the ontology to draw inferences that support the necessary taxonomy functions, and developed an application, the web ontology classi er (WOC). The WOC uses the Afrotropical bee ontology and demonstrates the taxonomic functions namely: identi cation (keys) as well as the description and comparison of taxa (taxonomic revision)