 Odling-Smee et al. (2003) note that ecological inheritance “more closely resembles the inheritance of territory or property than it does the inheritance of genes.” In particular, it includes transmission of material resources that are difficult to construe as informational. Odling-Smee (2010: 181) enumerates fundamental differences between ecological inheritance and genetic inheritance: (1) Ecological inheritance is transmitted through an external environment. It is not transmitted by reproduction. (2) Ecological inheritance need not depend on the transmission of discrete replicators (though this mechanism is not ruled out). (3) Ecological inheritance is continuously transmitted by multiple organisms, to multiple other organisms, within and between generations, throughout the lifetime of organisms. (4) Ecological inheritance is not always transmitted by genetic relatives. It should be noted that some of these properties of ecological inheritance are shared by extra-genetic inheritance more generally.