Grounding Realizable Entities

Ontological representations of qualities, dispositions, and roles have beenrefined over the past decade, clarifying subtle distinctions in life scienceresearch. After articulating a widely-used characterization of these entitieswithin the context of Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), we identify gaps in thistreatment and motivate the need for supplementing the BFO characterization. Byway of supplement, we propose definitions for grounding relations holdingbetween qualities and dispositions, and dispositions and roles, illustratingour proposal by representing subtle aspects of host-pathogen interactions.