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PlantPhenoOntology / ppo

An ontology for describing the phenology of individual plants and populations of plants, and for integrating plant phenological data across sources and scales.
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pollen-releasing traits #71

Closed edenny closed 12 months ago

edenny commented 1 year ago

We have 3 pollen-releasing traits: {pollen-releasing floral structure presence} {pollen-releasing flower head presence} {pollen-releasing flower presence}

Do we need all 3 of these for some reason, or is it enough just to have {pollen-releasing flower presence} since pollen only comes from individual flowers ,and flower heads and floral structures by definition include individual flowers?

ramonawalls commented 12 months ago

I think the flower head terms is so that this trait can be scored consistently for plants like sunflowers, where the other traits are recorded for flower heads. It's true that if you score a plant has having pollen releasing flowers, you will know that it has pollen releasing flower heads if you know that the species has flower heads, but since we don't include taxonomy in our reasoning, it would be hard to automatically make that inference.

ramonawalls commented 12 months ago

Discussed with @edenny. Flower head terms were added for NPN data for grasses and sedges (not sunflowers), since it can be hard to distinguish whether or not an individual flower is open or closed but you can always tell if a flower head is present. If pollen releasing flowers are present, and we know the species has flower heads (ie. inflorescenses), we don't need the pollen producing flower head term, because queries include the taxon, and the researcher will know that there are flower heads. NPN only uses pollen releasing flowers.

However, if we were using a structure at all, we just included all the terms, even though it creates some redundancy.

By the same reasoning that pollen releasing flower head presence is not needed, technically, flower head presence is not needed either, because if you scored it as flowers present, it would provide the same information, if you know that the species has inflorescences. Nonetheless, there is not harm in keeping this set of terms, because from the flower head presence terms you can reason the flower presence terms, and it allows you to be a little more specific.

ramonawalls commented 12 months ago

Outcome: we will keep the term.