Ontologies related to animals or livestock for the GBADs programme: a review

The Global Burden of Animal Diseases (GBADs) programme aims to assess the impact of animal health on agricultural animals, livestock production systems, and associated communities worldwide. As part of the Animal Health Ontology theme’s objectives, the programme reviewed conceptual frameworks, ontologies, and classification systems in biomedical science. The focus was on data requirements in animal health and its connections with human and environmental health. In May 2023, the team conducted searches on recognised repositories of biomedical ontologies, including BioPortal, Open Biological and Biomedical Ontology (OBO) Foundry, and Ontology Lookup Service (OLS), to identify animal and livestock ontologies and those containing relevant concepts. Sixteen ontologies were found, covering topics such as surveillance, anatomy, and genetics. Notable examples include ‘Animal Trait Ontology for Livestock’, ‘Animal Health Surveillance Ontology’ (in progress), ‘NCBITaxon’, and ‘Uberon’. However, some ontologies lacked class definitions for a significant portion of their classes. The review highlights the need for domain evidence to support proposed models, critical appraisal of external ontologies before reuse, and external expert reviews along with statistical tests of agreements. The findings from this review informed the structural framework, concepts, and rationales of the Animal Health Ontology (AHO) for GBADs. The AHO aims to increase the interoperability and transparency of GBADs data, thereby estimating the impacts of animal diseases on agriculture, livestock production systems, and associated communities globally.