Age category update

[UlrikeS91]

#276

@lzehl or @Raphael-Gazzotti, I have only updated the terms in 'latest'. Is this update propagated into the other versions by the autopopulation pipeline or should I add them manually to this PR?

[Raphael-Gazzotti]

@UlrikeS91
'latest' is sufficient.

Feel free to ping me if anything unusual comes up with the autopopulation pipeline.

[lzehl]

General question: should we make it clearer in the name that we speak of stages? e.g. rename to "adult stage" etc. And also then in the long run rename the schema type to LifeCycleStage?

Or should we adapt definitions to "age category"? Examples:
adult: "Age category which groups all alive subjects that are sexually mature."
juveline: "Age category which groups all alive subject that are independent of the nest and/or caregivers, but not yet sexually mature."

[lzehl]

Considering that we refer to the stage not the boundary for the others I would probably suggest to rename this to "postmortem" or "deceased"?

[UlrikeS91]

Yes, I agree. I prefer "deceased" but I added "post-mortem stage" and "death stage" as synonyms.

[UlrikeS91]

General question: should we make it clearer in the name that we speak of stages? e.g. rename to "adult stage" etc. And also then in the long run rename the schema type to LifeCycleStage?

Or should we adapt definitions to "age category"? Examples: adult: "Age category which groups all alive subjects that are sexually mature." juveline: "Age category which groups all alive subject that are independent of the nest and/or caregivers, but not yet sexually mature."

I do like the logic of age category = narrowing down the range and age = providing specific age. It's more intuitive than life cycle stage and age.

It would be more accurate to rename everything to life cycle stage.

I'm against renaming the instances to "XY stage" while the terminology remains "age category". This will be confusing.

In summary:
Long-term: probably best to move over to life cycle stage (as this is more accurate), I guess the property in the specimen schemas could remain "age category" with instructions saying something like: "Add the age range of the specimen defined through its life cycle stages."
Now: Keep age category, don't add "stage" to instance names, adjust definitions.

Counter suggestion for your examples:
adult: "An individual alive subject that has reached sexual maturity."
juveline: "An individual alive subject that is independent of the nest and/or caregivers, but not yet sexually mature."

I think this should work, especially if we define "age category" itself as: "Distinct life cycle class that is defined by a similar age or age range (developmental stage) within a group of individual beings."