Research in evolutionary biology produces much information about the anatomy of organisms. However, this information is usually available in human language, which cannot be easily understood by computers. We can use ontologies—controlled vocabularies—to represent anatomical information for computers. They allow combining knowledge from different studies using computational tools, thus helping to build large datasets for research. Bees include over 20,000 species distributed worldwide. They are well-known pollinators of flowering plants. Bees use their mouthparts—an anatomical system—to access nectar in flowers. Thus, understanding the evolution of mouthparts is important for understanding how bees interact with flowers. The goal of this research is to study the evolution of bees' mouthparts with the help of ontologies to analyse information from several studies.

2024

2028