Individuals (instances) are the basic, "ground level" components of an ontology. The individuals in an ontology may include concrete objects such as people, animals, tables, automobiles, molecules, and planets, as well as abstract individuals such as numbers and words (although there are differences of opinion as to whether numbers and words are classes or individuals). Strictly speaking, an ontology need not include any individuals, but one of the general purposes of an ontology is to provide a means of classifying individuals, even if those individuals are not explicitly part of the ontology.
skos:example (annotation property) is used to supply an example of the use of a concept (i.e., to clarify something in the definition).
I went through all individuals and I'd remove the following becasue they are imported and not used:
defined classexample to be eventually removedfailed exploratory terminstance examplelarger term examplemetadata completemetadata incompletenamenamed class expressionorganizational termout of scopeplaceholder removedterm exampleterm importedterm splitterm mergedto be replaced with external ontology termuncurateduniversal