Many thanks to Chris Mungall (LBNL), Elvis Hsin-Hui Wu (University of Arizona), Gail Gasparich (Towson University), and Gordon Burleigh (University of Florida) for comments and/or assistance with ontology construction and compilation of taxonomic descriptions and term definitions.Thanks to Oliver He (University of Michigan) for technical assistance with OntoBee and OntoFox, and Gareth Owen (ChEBI project leader, head curator) and other curators at ChEBI for assistance in the incorporation of microbial-specific chemical terms and synonyms into ChEBI.Thanks also to the instructors (Melissa Haendel, Matt Yoder, Jim Baihoff) and students of the 2013 NESCent Ontologies for Evolutionary Biology workshop, and to Karen Cranston (NESCent director) and the support staff at NESCent.This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation Assembling the Tree of Life Program (DBI-1208534), and by a travel grant to attend the 2013 NESCent Ontologies for Evolutionary Biology workshop.