Philosophers have developed complicated, partially contradictory, systems and terms. They concentrate on theory and side with rational argumentation. Homo sapiens is not the center of the earth, and the earth is not the center of the universe. Earth is a planet among billions in our galaxy, and there are billions of such galaxies. No species, not even Homo sapiens , can live for itself.
Ecosystems consist of non-living and living components.
These connect in diverse, mostly complex ways. The living components react with and against each other, they utilize each other as sources of energy and matter, and they interact with, and modify, their non-living environments. Such are the basic realities of life on earth as we ecologists can grasp them. Principal elements of evolution, these realities provide the life process with drive and direction. There are no such things in nature's original plan.