The "The Ecology of Dune" (fictionally by Pardot Kynes, the first planetary ecologist on Arrakis) appendix in the first Dune novel is about this subject: Life i

The "The Ecology of Dune" (fictionally by Pardot Kynes, the first planetary ecologist on Arrakis) appendix in the first Dune novel is about this subject: Life is its own tool to ever more efficiently extract energy from a system.