If Life is Meaningless Anyway, then What's Wrong with Religion?

[Angrboda]

Damnit Huggy.  Just when I was getting used to the goalposts being where they were.

what goal post did I move?

From essential role to important role. Not to mention that you provided a loaded interpretation of what the authors meant by important.

An ecosystem's health refers to its ability to generate new life in a cycle. That this cycle doesn't necessarily include this or that organism doesn't mean the ecosystem isn't generating new life. Ecosystems are defined by the life they contain. It's mere semantics to say that an ecosystem is worse off for the absence of this or that species. An important consumer isn't necessarily essential to an ecosystem.