Intellectual Merit

From HAO Wiki

The ontology of Hymenoptera anatomical terms promotes discovery in diverse research communities: hymenopterists will finally have a single source for terminological clarification (as all terms will be textually defined, illustrated, and typfied by annotations), genome scientists will have the foundation to kickstart and refine the gene sequence and gene expression annotation, researchers interested in phenotype descriptions – either as a way to diagnose specimens or to explore systems for genetic mechanisms – will have the resource required to query databases of entity-quality statements. The tools developed by this project will undoubtedly enhance taxonomy by enabling semantic descriptions based on a controlled vocabulary. One anticipated impact here is a decreased turnaround time on reviews (i.e., less time spent perusing descriptions for inconsistencies, which currently takes, on average 7-90 days per review - a huge investment of man hours that could be spent describing yet more species and thus freeing us to address other aspects of the taxonomic impediment). This represents one of many ways in which the HAO transforms taxonomy and morphological phylogenetics for a extraordinarily diverse and actively researched lineage of insects.