Guide/Ontology

One of the strengths of databasing is the possibility to cross-reference. In our project we have the potential to take advantage of this by accessing the Hymenoptera Ontology Project. Whenever you are viewing a character description (Fig. 11) you can click markup description in the menu to the left and MX will highlight all words in the description with a corresponding entry in the ontology. The highlights are links, each of which will take you to a definition on a public webpage also powered by MX (Fig. 13). Furthermore, there is a private part which is available to all users of the chalcid project (Fig. 14). Just click Change projects at the top right of a page and choose Hymenoptera Ontology located immediately below the chalcid project in figure 3. There is no need to log out first, and you can even access both projects and have multiple windows open simultaneously.

The first view presents you with a choice of what to do. Typically you will want to either list all the terms (Fig. 14), search for term through the blue box, add a new term (Fig. 15 & 16) or edit an existing definition. All these procedures are pretty straightforward and all you really need to know is that when creating a new term you are not required to enter highest taxon name to which this term applies (Fig. 16) although we would recommend it. A term can also have a number of relationships such as the terminal button being part_of the antenna. If we would later decide on another name for terminal button this can be indicated by it being a synonym_of, e.g., reduced apical flagellomere.