Vivaria - small, enclosed (often air-tight) ecosystems with a sampling of species.
The original vivaria were relevant in global environmental education from their very inception. The value of enclosed "pico-ecosystems" was discovered by accident, by a British botanist, Nathaniel Ward. Ward noticed that although London's smog was killing the imported ferns in his garden, in the bottles of soil brought from the ferns' native ecosystems, which were populated with insects able to recycle oxygen into CO2, the same ferns sprouted healthily.
This discovery, and the subsequent invention of the Wardian case, had several salutary effects.
Project Persephone aims to assess the recreational, social and environmental education value of exovivaria - vivaria collectively maintained teleoperatively in Earth orbit.