Certain trophic concepts (e.g. detritivore/saprotroph) refer to the same food resource (detritus) but to different mechanisms for digesting organic matter (external or internal digestion).
Currently, the SFWO adopts the following paradigm:
Metazoa -> internal digestion
Microorganisms -> external digestion
Instead of using Metazoa/microorganism in the logical definitions of trophic concepts, we could create two classes "organism using internal digestion" and "organism using external digestion" that could be axiomatized using taxonomic concepts, e.g.
Metazoa subclassOf organism using internal digestion
detritivore = organism using internal digestion and (eats some detritus)
Certain trophic concepts (e.g. detritivore/saprotroph) refer to the same food resource (detritus) but to different mechanisms for digesting organic matter (external or internal digestion).
Currently, the SFWO adopts the following paradigm:
Instead of using Metazoa/microorganism in the logical definitions of trophic concepts, we could create two classes "organism using internal digestion" and "organism using external digestion" that could be axiomatized using taxonomic concepts, e.g.
Metazoa subclassOf organism using internal digestion detritivore = organism using internal digestion and (eats some detritus)