Adapting fundamental concepts from insect societies to the demands of bio-ontologies

The present work provides a logical account for translating fundamental concepts in the study of social insects to bio-ontologies, namely ‘colony’ and ‘caste’, which can be used by researchers for describing and organizing entities belonging to non-human societies, as well as for the provision of evidential criteria for evaluating cumulative-constitutive explanations of ‘social’ entities. We explore how different properties can provide connectedness of ‘colonies’ and ‘castes’ and discuss the implications of this approach to biological representation and ontology design. Finally, we briefly discuss some limitations in current approaches to demarcate subcategories of ‘castes’. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.