New Term - "caste" for eusocial organisms

[wcornwell]

New term

• Submitter: @wcornwell
• Efficacy Justification (why is this term necessary?): Eusocial organisms not well captured by existing terms: lifestage and sex
• Demand Justification (name at least two organizations that independently need this term): All museums with bee, ant, termite, or mole rat collections
• Stability Justification (what concerns are there that this might affect existing implementations?): Should not affect exiting implementations
• Implications for dwciri: namespace (does this change affect a dwciri term version)?:

Proposed attributes of the new term:

• Term name (in lowerCamelCase for properties, UpperCamelCase for classes): caste
• Organized in Class (e.g., Occurrence, Event, Location, Taxon): occurrence
• Definition of the term (normative): Categorisation of individuals for eusocial species (including some mammals and arthropods)
• Usage comments (recommendations regarding content, etc., not normative): values could include worker, soldier, and reproductive
• Examples (not normative):
• Refines (identifier of the broader term this term refines; normative): this refines "sex" and "lifestage" for a particular set of organisms
• Replaces (identifier of the existing term that would be deprecated and replaced by this term; normative):
• ABCD 2.06 (XPATH of the equivalent term in ABCD or EFG; not normative):

[tucotuco]

Thanks @wcornwell for this submission and for using the new term template. It makes things super easy to assess. I would put the values you suggest in the Examples section. I have added the label "Process - need evidence for demand", because what is needed is not a general statement of who might be able to use it, but rather specific independent organizations that are willing to state that they have the need to share this information.

[wcornwell]

thanks for this. maybe @bwprice could comment if this would be useful for the NHM? Paul Eggelton or other social insect experts would be also good to check with but I can't find any on github.

[bwprice]

@wcornwell - I will ask colleagues and update asap.

[zedomel]

Hi @wcornwell,

Have you taken a look at the plant-pollinator vocabulary ( https://ppi.rebipp.org.br/)? It defines the term caste and it is supposed to be used with dwc:measurementType. Please, see:

• Text Guide https://ppi.rebipp.org.br/text/
• The paper describing how to share plant-pollinators interaction data, but I'm sure you can adapt it to use only the caste term as you needed ( https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giac043)

Let me know if I can help you in how to document the caste using this approach.

thanks.

[wcornwell]

Hi @zedomel ,

Yes, I did have a glance at that when it popped up on google. You have very nice solution here, it seems with bees in mind:

I think it's worth discussing with domain experts about whether the same vocabulary could work for all groups of eusocial organisms. Termite castes are a bit more complex compared to bees: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphys.2014.00127/full

I'm curious what @bwprice colleagues suggest.

[DanBIF]

At the Danish GBIF node DanBIF, there is a need for a "caste" term in at least on sample based dataset on bees. E.g. see https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/1587094318 and the full dataset. I am investigating how caste is treated at the Natural History Museum of Denmark - in Specify. I will post this when known.

[EstebanMH-SiB]

We endorse this addition from SiB Colombia, and we made an inquiry with some of our publishers to review this term, and Dimitri Forero from Instituto de Ciencias Naturales - Universidad Nacional de Colombia say this:

It is a good addition, however it can be more complex to establish controlled vocabularies from other groups. At least for ants, I asked some colleagues that work with that group and they think of these examples for the vocabulary:

• worker, mayor worker, minor worker, male alate, male dealate, queen alate, queen dealate, intercaste. Reference antWiki.

But it would be nice to ask experts in termites to see the possible vocabulary for that group.

So from SiB Colombia we think that maybe for this term we can put a wide variety of examples, to showcase that every group can use domain specific terms. It can be a sample from several groups, something like: Queen, male alate, intercaste, minor worker, soldier, ergatoid.

Also, in usage comments we can put that information explicitly, something like: Recommended best practice is to use a controlled vocabulary, those vocabularies can be domain specific for different eusocial insects.