Abstract
The present work provides a logical account for translating fundamental concepts in the study of social insects to bio-ontologies, namely ‘colony’ and ‘caste’, 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 cumulative-constitutive explanations of ‘social’ entities. We explore how different properties can provide connectedness of ‘colonies’ and ‘castes’ and discuss the implications of this approach to biological representation and ontology design. Finally, we briefly discuss some limitations in current approaches to demarcate subcategories of ‘castes’.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
This version of the manuscript has been revised to update the contents in the Results section and some aspects of the Discussion that had to be adjusted to match the findings of the new results.
