Developing the Animals in Context Ontology

Animals are classified by any number of various characteristics including Linnaean rank, physiologic features, purpose and place. The Animals in Context Ontology (ACO) was developed by editing a subset of the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT © ) to follow the Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry Principles. It includes animals classified by Linnaean ranking as well as practical uses that are of interest to science, medicine and agriculture. ACO was built within the ontological framework of the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) and the Relations Ontology (RO) and uses classes from other ontologies including the Phenotypic Quality Ontology (PATO), the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) Taxonomy, the Environment Ontology (EnvO), and the Gene Ontology (GO). ACO includes 216 unique classes in an OWL format. Availability: http://vtsl.vetmed.vt.edu/aco/Ontology/aco.zip.