The University of Missouri-Rolla is awarded a grant to create an ontology of amphibian morphology by enlisting a blend of manual and semi-automated approaches to mine electronic media for instances of potential concepts and properties. This research will be carried out jointly with the University of Kansas. The ontology will enable disassociated research groups to overcome differences in three commonly used anatomical lexicons derived from research on each distinct order. The resulting ontology will be accessed through the web and through an application programming interface. An advisory board and outreach workshops will be organized to promote community engagement in the development and ultimate maintenance of the ontology. Because ontologies can be understood by both software agents and humans, they are an ideal vehicle for information exchange, creating the foundation for integrating knowledge from multiple disciplines. Currently, the development of most ontologies requires large amounts of manual effort. Semi-automated generation of ontologies will substantially decrease the amount of human effort required in the process. This project will demonstrate this approach in the domain of amphibian morphology with the expectation that it will be potentially applicable to many other domains. Because the meta-data inherent in ontologies allow for universal information exchange, expediting the process of ontology development will be instrumental to fully realizing a Semantic Web.
