The return of an ecosystem or habitat to its original community structure, natural complement of species, and natural functions.

A facility designed for the ex situ conservation of individual plan varieties through seed preservation and storage.

Natural selection is the differential contribution of offspring to the next generation by various genetic types belonging to the same populations. Artificial selection is the intentional manipulation by man of the fitness of individuals in a population to produce a desired evolutionary response.

A group of organisms capable of interbreeding freely with each other but not with members of other species.

A function of the distribution and abundance of species. Approximately synonymous with Species Richness. In more technical literature, includes considerations of the evenness of species abundances. An ecosystem is said to be more diverse, according to the more technical definition, if species present have equal population sizes and less diverse if many species are rare and some are very common.

A function of several characteristics of community or ecosystem dynamics, including the degree of population fluctuations, the community's resistance to disturbances, the speed of recovery from disturbances, and the persistence of the community's composition through time.

A subdivision of a species; a population or series of populations occupying a discrete range of differing genetically from other subspecies of the same species.