Abstract
The present work provides a logical account for translating ‘caste’ concepts in social insects to an ontology-based data model, which can be used by researchers for describing and organizing entities belonging to non-human societies, as well as for the provision of evidential criteria for evaluating constitutive explanations of ‘social’ entities. We establish the top-level category for the concept of ‘caste’ and give examples on how to accommodate some subcategories (e.g. workers) in the ontology, following a domain granularity framework for the life sciences. We also provide accounts on current limitations in automated reasoning, current practices for ‘caste’ conceptualization, and improvements needed to be addressed in future works
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.