Fig 1. Phenotypic data integration challenges.

(A) The many names for the mountain gorilla, Gorilla beringei, resulted from years of nomenclatural acts, misspellings, and the quirks of human language and popular culture. (B) The term “paramere” has been ambiguously used to describe 5 different parts of the male genitalia of a gasteruptiid wasp (red). (C) The end-of-season height of a wheat plant can be described by an exact measurement or relative to a “wild type.” (D) With the exception of microorganisms, measurements are collected from specimens but are sometimes represented as a single value representing an entire population or taxon. All 4 of these panels represent 1 or more challenges to phenotypic data integration. Image credit: Panel A by David J. Patterson, used with permission.