PopulationAndCommunityOntology
definition of family - restrict to a biological definition?
http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/PCO_0000020 ; family
Is currently defined as:
"A domestic group, or a number of domestic groups linked through descent
(demonstrated or stipulated) from a common ancestor, marriage, or adoption."
It would be useful to have a purely biological definition (or perhaps have 2 or
3 related terms, one of which includes marriage and adoption).
Perhaps; "A collection of organisms of the same species whose members include
are all either genealogically related to each other or have mated with each
other and whose members form a socially interacting group."
This would presumably would include ant colonies and wolf packs as well as
smaller family groups - so perhaps needs a more general label?
(If we have relations for descent and mating then we may be able to at least
partially formalise the definition).
I guess we might also want grouping that cover naturally occurring adoption
and cuckolding. Presumably this needs to be defined purely in terms of social
interactions.
Original issue reported on code.google.com by [email protected] on 6 Dec 2013 at 10:29
See
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VaUiiNsHRkvE7t29kfB4cu1GqMq0hkNCFccdIHLPynA/
edit#
The decision was that PCO should focus on biological/geneological families, but
it is still useful to have a few high level classes for other (e.g., social,
economic) families, if just to distinguish how they differ from geneological
families. Important that names reflect the different definitions of family.
Original comment by [email protected] on 6 Feb 2015 at 5:11
Hello @ramonawalls, all. I am working with the ClinGen DMWG to build a model supporting clinical variant interpretations, and we are looking to re-use as possible from existing ontologies. We need the concept of a biological / genealogical family for the purpose of describing pedigree analyses. I think the proposed definition above would work for our needs.
A collection of organisms of the same species whose members include are all either genealogically related to each other or have mated with each other and whose members form a socially interacting group.
Is there a plan to implement such a term in the near future? Or should we create a term in our namespace and replace if/when this gets implemented in the PCO?
@mbrush We have not instituted any policies to restrict groups of organisms to a "biological" definition.
We could add the term you are requesting fairly quickly if that will help. Please make a new issue for it, and we can discuss the definition there.
I get the priority in terms of genomics for providing biological family entities. I am wondering if you want to take on the other types of familial relationship for OBOFoundry? Even from a biomedical perspective these are important in terms of epidemiology/infectious disease. Here are a few diagrams I cooked up recently on the subject fyi. I was trying not to be human specific unless necessary (I.e. animal relationships aren't just biological either as when eggs get sneaked into nests, or animals become members of other families, etc.).
