How do computed ontology mappings evolve? - A case study for life science ontologies

Mappings between related ontologies are increasingly used to support data integration and analysis tasks. Changes in the ontologies also require the adaptation of ontology mappings. So far the evolution of ontology mappings has received little attention albeit ontologies change continuously especially in the life sciences. We therefore analyze how mappings between popular life science ontologies evolve for different match algorithms. We also evaluate which semantic ontology changes primarily affect the mappings. Our results can be valuable for users working with ontology mappings, e.g., one can learn from past ontology/mapping changes and their correlation to estimate possible mapping changes if new ontology versions become available.