The Teleost Taxonomy Ontology

Abstract

The Teleost Taxonomy Ontology (TTO) is an ontology of taxonomic groups and associated names for fish (not just teleosts). This ontology has served as a source of names and taxonomic structure within the Phenoscape project since early 2008. Although the TTO is based on Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes (CoF) and incorporates all valid species and genus names, it is also extended by the curation needs of the Phenoscape project. Names of fossil taxa not included in the CoF as well as references to specimens identi*ed only to genus (e.g., Eigenmannia sp. (Fink and Fink 1981)) are incorporated into the TTO as required by the curation needs of the Phenoscape project. As Phenoscape receives updates to the CoF, a tool called TTOUpdate merges the changes into the TTO.