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Best behaviour? Ontologies and the formal description of animal behaviour

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Abstract

The development of ontologies for describing animal behaviour has proved to be one of the most difficult of all scientific knowledge domains. Ranging from neurological processes to human emotions, the range and scope needed for such ontologies is highly challenging, but if data integration and computational tools such as automated reasoning are to be fully applied in this important area the underlying principles of these ontologies need to be better established and development needs detailed coordination. Whilst the state of scientific knowledge is always paramount in ontology and formal description framework design, this is a particular problem with neurobehavioural ontologies where our understanding of the relationship between behaviour and its underlying biophysical basis is currently in its infancy. In this commentary, we discuss some of the fundamental problems in designing and using behaviour ontologies, and present some of the best developed tools in this domain.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Aberystwyth, Old College, King Street, Aberystwyth, SY23 2AX, UK

    Georgios V. Gkoutos

  2. Computational Bioscience Research Center, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, 4700 KAUST, Thuwal, 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia

    Robert Hoehndorf

  3. Institute of Sport and Physical Activity Research (ISPAR), University of Bedfordshire, Bedfordshire, UK

    Loukia Tsaprouni

  4. Department of Physiology Development and Neuroscience, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

    Paul N. Schofield

  5. Centre for Computational Biology, College of Medical and Dental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Georgios V. Gkoutos

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  1. Georgios V. Gkoutos
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  2. Robert Hoehndorf
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  3. Loukia Tsaprouni
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  4. Paul N. Schofield
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Correspondence to Georgios V. Gkoutos or Paul N. Schofield.

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Gkoutos, G.V., Hoehndorf, R., Tsaprouni, L. et al. Best behaviour? Ontologies and the formal description of animal behaviour. Mamm Genome 26, 540–547 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00335-015-9590-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00335-015-9590-y

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