Ecological inheritance
The inheritance, via an external environment, of one or more natural selection pressures previously modified by niche-constructing organisms.

EMGAs (environmentally mediated genotypic associations)
Indirect but specific connections between distinct genotypes mediated either by biotic or abiotic environmental components in the external environment. EMGAs may either associate different genes in a single population, or they may associate different genes in different populations. Where EMGAs arise the expression of semantic information by niche-constructing organisms in one population may affect the acquisition of semantic information in the same or a second population through the modification of natural selection pressures generated via one or more intermediate components, with evolutionary or ecological consequences.

Extended evolutionary theory
Evolutionary theory that, in addition to natural selection and genetic inheritance, formally includes niche construction and ecological inheritance as evolutionary processes.

Niche
The sum of all the natural selection pressures to which the population is exposed . A population's niche is specified by a "niche function" N(t) where N(t) = h(O,E). O is any population of organisms and E is O's environment. The dynamics of N(t), equivalent to niche evolution, are driven by both O's niche-constructing acts, and by selection from sources that have previously been modified by O's niche-constructing acts, as well as by sources that are independent of O's niche construction, and that may change for independent reasons.


Weaver nest Niche construction
The process whereby organisms, through their metabolism, their activities, and their choices, modify their own and/or each other's niches. Niche construction may result in changes in one or more natural selection pressures in the external environment of populations. Niche-constructing organisms may either alter the natural selection pressures of their own population, of other populations, or of both.

• Counteractive niche construction involves organisms either perturbing components of their environments, or relocating in their environments in such a way that they wholly or partly reverse or neutralise some prior change in one or more natural selection pressures in their environments. These prior changes in natural selection could be caused either by independent processes in an environment, or by the prior niche constructing activities of other organisms, or by the prior niche-constructing activities of the organisms themselves, and/or their ancestors.
• Inceptive niche construction involves organisms either perturbing components of their environments, or relocating in their environments in such a way that they introduce a new change in one or more natural selection pressures.
• Negative niche construction refers to niche-constructing acts that, on average decrease the fitness of the niche-constructing organisms. In the long run we expect some niche-constructing activities of organisms to become negative for their populations.
• Perturbational niche construction involves organisms physically changing one or more components of their external environments.
• Positive niche construction refers to niche-constructing acts that, on average increase the fitness of the niche-constructing organisms. In the short run virtually all niche construction by individual organisms is expected to be positive.
• Relocational niche construction involves organisms actively moving in space, as well as choosing or biasing the direction, the distance in space through which they travel, and the time when they travel, thereby modifying natural selection pressures.

Phenogenotypes
A class of individuals in a human population with a specified combination of a genotype and a variant of a cultural trait. Phenogenotypes are useful abstractions in mathematical analyses of human evolution, and are used to model human cultural processes and human genetic processes simultaneously. Phenogenotypes are the basic evolutionary units when biological and cultural transmission and inheritance processes are operating in association with each other.

Semantic information
Adaptive, or possibly maladaptive “know how” carried by organisms typically, but not exclusively, in genomes.  In biology “know how” seldom carries cognitive connotations. The concept is best derived from Gregory Chaitin’s Algorithmic information theory. See: Chaitin, G.J. 1987. Algorithmic information theory. Cambridge tracts in theoretical computer science 1. CUP.