Wikidata:Property proposal/Life stage

Life stage

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Natural science

   Not done

Description	Life stage of an animal, plant, or other taxa
Data type	Item
Domain	item
Example 1	Leptobatopsis mesominiata (Q2855459) has image (P18); needs qualifier life stage → adult (Q80994)
Example 2	Chaoborus (Q2707905) has image (P18); needs qualifier life stage → larva (Q129270)
Example 3	Tortula muralis (Q71869) has image (P18); needs qualifier life stage → sporophyte (Q647173)
Example 4	Crocothemis nigrifrons (Q1318898) has characteristic (P1552) aquatic (Q441122) needs qualifier life stage → larva (Q129270)
Source	phase of life (Q1811014)

Motivation

My primary use case is as qualifiers for images of individuals on commons, i.e. but this may also be used for if there is an item about a particular life stage of an animal, i.e. Chaoborus (Q2707905), which is an image of the larval stage, probably because the larval form is more well known, though in most species the adults form is more well known. Mvolz (talk) 13:14, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Discussion

• @ Mvolz: Can you fix up your examples so they look like Wikidata statements? They should have a subject item and then the value (which is presumably what your current list is of allowed values?) - if you intend this as a qualifier for images or something like that you may need to clarify more how it should be used. See other property proposals for how to do this. ArthurPSmith (talk) 19:42, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

• Gave it an attempt - is this okay? Wasn't sure since it's all qualifiers Mvolz (talk) 10:33, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

•  Question Do we have any items that represent life stages of taxa? If so, how would (a) such a modeling of life stages as separate items relate to (b) distinguishing by life stage using qualifiers the images of (and potentially other statements about) full-lifecycle taxon items? Would it be worthwhile to try to settle on either (a) or (b) as a general rule? If (b), then yes, this property would be useful as a qualifier. But I imagine that statements with a lot of properties might eventually get this qualifier (think weight, size, number of feet, prey, vernacular name), so there may be reasons to consider (a). In that case, those images might be linked from the life-stage items, and those items would have to be characterized by a property like this, which would probably not be used as a qualifier.
  Tobias1984 (talk) Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; * *Andy's edits TypingAway (talk) Daniel Mietchen (talk) Tinm (talk) Tubezlob Vincnet41 Netha Hussain Fractaler Tris T7 ^{TT me} Photocyte GoEThe (talk) Egon Willighagen
  
  Notified participants of WikiProject Biology. Thoughts? ―BlaueBlüte (talk) 12:08, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

@BlaueBlüte: We have a good number of items representing life stages of individual species, e.g. flaxseed (Q911332)   , mouse embryo (Q105811019)   , chicken embryo (Q70071341)   . There are also some that represent life stages for larger taxonomic groups, e.g. tadpole (Q168525)    or hatchling (Q2892050)   . --Daniel Mietchen (talk) 21:10, 30 January 2023 (UTC)

• @ Mvolz:: Maybe you are refering to biological life cycle (Q513359)? Shouldn't be flaxseed (Q911332) an instance of seed (Q40763)? As a common trait of all seed plant (Q25814)? --Succu (talk) 21:33, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
  • The cycle refers to the entire cycle. Each part of the cycle is a different phase. A flaxseed is for sure an instance of seed. But, on any given species, how do you represent what stage the image is of? We often default to showing the adult, but that's not the case for every animal. Some animals are more famous for their larval form than the adult form. - Mvolz (talk) 17:23, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
    • Shouldn't your example Chaoborus (Q2707905) refined to Nematocera larva (Q27477239) rather than to larva (Q129270)? --Succu (talk) 22:36, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
      • I guess? The purpose is a generalised term for use on species items that don't have a separate item for the larval form. Not every species needs separate items for each life stage. Either would probably be fine. - Mvolz (talk) 17:23, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
•  Question As a further modeling concern, how would use of this property as a qualifier on statements linking taxa and Commons images relate to the use of structured data directly on those same Commons images? ―BlaueBlüte (talk) 22:21, 30 January 2023 (UTC)
•  Question How does this relate to biological phase (P4774)? --Lagewi (talk) 16:25, 31 January 2023 (UTC)
  • I would see Jenniferhammock's comment below. - Mvolz (talk) 17:23, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
•  Question Could this property also be used as a qualifier for properties that represent traits of taxa? See Wikidata:WikiProject Biodiversity/Traits This would be useful, for example, in cases where adults are terrestrial but larvae are aquatic. Sylverfysh (talk) 14:58, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
  • I don't see why not! I've added an example about (Example 4). I've actually added the qualifier to the item using biological phase (P4774) but it does show a constraint error- Mvolz (talk) 17:23, 24 January 2024 (UTC)
•  Support --MinRo60 (talk) 20:47, 28 Feb 2023 (UTC)
•  Support --Jacquelineparedessanchez (talk) 20:52, 28 Feb 2023 (UTC)
•  Support --User:Delia_Gonzale_Marin (talk) 21:05, 28 Feb 2023 (UTC)
•  Support Sylverfysh (talk) 18:15, 3 March 2023 (UTC)
•  Oppose - A lot of unanswered questions. --Succu (talk) 19:50, 3 March 2023 (UTC)

  @Mvolz: Can you clarify the relationship with biological phase (P4774). @Sylverfysh, MinRo60, Jacquelineparedessanchez, Delia_Gonzale_Marin: why are you casting support votes when the question about whether biological phase (P4774) fulfills the use case is open? ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 12:46, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

  biological phase (P4774) has an "as main value" property constraint, so it cannot be used as a qualifier on statements for properties that represent traits of taxa. I think this is an important use case, and "life stage" is the familiar terminology for this type of metadata. Sylverfysh (talk) 13:26, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

  biological phase (P4774), according to its existing uses, may be a superclass of "life stage". It applies not only to life history (eg: Q14905385) but also to other timescales- the cardiac cycle (eg: Q7663898) and the cell cycle (eg: Q130996) Jenniferhammock (talk) 13:08, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

  @Mvolz:, could you please clarify all the comments above. Otherwise, we have to close as "not done"! Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 13:48, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

  I've addressed all the comments I could. In example 4 I tried using biological phase instead. I guess we could change the constraint to use it in this manner, but if you look at other ontologies, they are not treated as the same, i.e. https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ols4/ontologies/go/classes/http%253A%252F%252Fpurl.obolibrary.org%252Fobo%252FGO_0044848 and https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ols4/ontologies/fbdv/classes/http%253A%252F%252Fpurl.obolibrary.org%252Fobo%252FFBdv_00007012 are different. Biological phase has superclass biological process, and life stage has superclass developmental stage. The most recent common ancestor is "occurrent". A biological phase is part of being a biological process. Whereas in life phase, the specific biological process in this is development. So a direct subclass relationship isn't quite possible. -Mvolz (talk) 17:23, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

•  Oppose changing the constraint on biological phase (P4774) would be better. The two OBO links are from two different ontologies. The life stage one is specifically for Drosophila.

https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ols4/ontologies/ecao/classes/http%253A%252F%252Fpurl.obolibrary.org%252Fobo%252FUBERON_0000105?lang=en has in UBERON "life cycle stage". If we create a new property reusing the Uberon name would likely be better than the one specifically for Drosophila. I however don't see that the added complexity of having two properties provides any benefit here. Changing the constraint works for this usecase and nobody showed that we would have a problem if we just reuse it here.

Given that the existing constraint was set automatically by a bot and not by any human I just changed it to allow usage on qualifiers. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 18:31, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

•  Not done, no consensus of proposed property at this time based on the above discussion. Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 12:30, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
• Belated  Support for "life stage" or "life cycle stage" (which should be synonyms) as a notable subclass of "biological phase". @ZI Jony, ChristianKl, Mvolz: Now that some of the above issues have been clarified, maybe it would be clearer for this discussion to be restarted focusing specifically on that proposal. Sj (talk) 11:47, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

  @Sj: It's not possible to subclass properties in a meaningful way. There's such a thing as subproperty of (P1647) but that doesn't have the same support that subclass has. SPARQL and Constraints for example don't work well with subproperty of (P1647). Subproperties are more costly than subclasses and thus it doesn't make sense to use them as liberally as subclasses within Wikidata. Nobody articulated any benefit from having two separate properties. ChristianKl ❪✉❫ 17:49, 25 May 2024 (UTC)