Terms representing the “musculature”

Uberon has several terms intended to represent sets of muscles.

• musculoskeletal system (a anatomical system), defined as a “anatomical system that consists of the muscular and skeletal system”;
• musculature of body (a organ system subdivision), defined as “the subdivision of the musculoskeletal system that consists of all the muscles of the body”;
• skeletal musculature (a anatomical structure), not defined but classified as part of the musculature of body;
• somatic musculature, not defined but classified as a subclass of musculature of body;
• enteric musculature, not defined but classified as a subclass of musculature of body and part of digestive tract;
• musculature, a organ system subdivision defined as a “subdivision of the muscular system corresponding to a subdivision of an organism; under this term, we have a bunch of musculature of ` terms (musculature of leg, musculature of thorax, etc.).

It seems clear that musculature of body is intended to encompass all the muscles of the body – both the somatic (aka skeletal) muscles and the visceral muscles. This is evident both in the text definition (“consists of all the muscles of the body”), in some of the synonyms (“set of all muscles”), and in the fact that both enteric musculature and somatic musculature are subclasses of musculature of body.

But musculature of body is also intended as being the muscular component of the musculoskeletal system. If musculature of body includes the visceral muscles, that means the visceral muscles are also part of the musculoskeletal system – I don’t think this is right, for at least two reasons:

• (the weak one) I believe most people would spontaneously think that something called the “musculoskeletal system” comprises… the skeleton and the associated (skeletal) muscles, and not the visceral muscles;
• (the strong one) logically, while it makes sense to consider the skeletal muscles and the skeleton as part of a single ”system” (they both act together to fulfil a shared function: they make the body move), it does not make sense to include the visceral muscles, as those muscles do not share a function with the skeletal muscles (reminder: anatomical system is defined as a “structure whose parts together to achieve some shared function”).

Proposed fix

Have:

• musculoskeletal system defined as comprising only the skeleton and the skeletal/somatic muscles, with parts:
  • skeletal system
  • skeletal muscle system (current musculature of body, here redefined to only include the skeletal muscles)

If it is deemed important to have a class that encompasses both the visceral and somatic muscles (even though, as explained above, I don’t think they should be considered as a single “system”), then we can have a separate

• muscle system (defined as all the muscles, regardless of type), with parts
  • skeletal muscle system (which would be both part of the muscle system and part of the musculoskeletal system);
  • visceral muscle system.