Branch rearrangements, Environmental feature, Environment

[cmungall]

Bary Smith Wrote:
-——-

can we work on this?

name: environmental feature
def: “A feature that is part of the totality of circumstances external to a definable entity.” [NM:nm]

The problem is that all (?) the environmental features listed are parts of the geospatial realm, e.g.

name: habitat
def: “A spatial region having environmental qualities which may sustain an organism or a community of organisms.” [EnvO:EnvO]
synonym: “biotope” RELATED []
is_a: ENVO:00002297 ! environmental feature

I like this definition much more.

My recommendation would be to create the new root, environment, define environmental feature explicitly as a feature that is part of an environment (environmental feature will still have to be an is-a root) put habitat as an environment for a group of organisms and thing of another term (niche?) for an environment of a single organism.

environment is_a environmental feature

at the same time we have:

environmental_feature part_of environment

Original comment by: normanmorrison

[cmungall]

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I think this seems like a sensible course of action.

However I would like to have other peoples thoughts before committing changes as this would be a high level branch rearrangement.

Original comment by: normanmorrison

[cmungall]

- assigned_to: nobody —> normanmorrison

Original comment by: normanmorrison

[cmungall]

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I strongly vote against.

The is_a/part_of mutual cyclicity is a massive warning flag

And we have a cyclicity in the definitions – EF is defined using environment, but E is_a EF

Original comment by: cmungall

[cmungall]

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I was thinking of this as well, but I was thinking that the environment was the top node:
The flu community uses “environment” as a habitat, that they sample from, but they don’t define it.
How about this definition for “environment”:
The complex of physical, chemical, and biotic factors found in and around an organism including living and non-living materials such as soil, water and air.

environment
environmental feature
environmental substance
geographic feature
habitat
mesoscopic feature

Lynn

Original comment by: lynn_schriml