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Freezing behavior, also called the freeze response or being petrified, is a reaction to specific stimuli, most commonly observed in prey animals, including humans. [1] [2] When a prey animal has been caught and completely overcome by the predator, it may respond by "freezing up/petrification" or in other words by uncontrollably becoming rigid or limp.
Freezing injury may occur at temperatures below 0 degrees Celsius. Symptoms of extracellular freezing include structural damage, dehydration, and necrosis. If intracellular freezing occurs, it will lead to death. Freezing injury is a result of lost permeability, plasmolysis, and post-thaw cell bursting.
The phosphorus cycle is the biogeochemical cycle that involves the movement of phosphorus through the lithosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere.Unlike many other biogeochemical cycles, the atmosphere does not play a significant role in the movement of phosphorus, because phosphorus and phosphorus-based materials do not enter the gaseous phase readily, [1] as the main source of gaseous phosphorus ...
It has been suggested that osteophagy is an innate behavior that allows animals to supplement their phosphorus and calcium uptake in order to avoid the costly effects of deficiencies in these minerals. [1] Osteophagic behavior has been observed in pastoral and wild animals, most notably ungulates and other herbivores, for over two hundred years ...
Phosphorus is classified as a pnictogen, together with nitrogen, arsenic, antimony, bismuth, and moscovium. Phosphorus is an element essential to sustaining life largely through phosphates, compounds containing the phosphate ion, PO 4 3−. Phosphates are a component of DNA, RNA, ATP, and phospholipids, complex compounds fundamental to cells.
Phosphorus forms parts of important life-sustaining molecules that are very common in the biosphere. Phosphorus does enter the atmosphere in very small amounts when the dust is dissolved in rainwater and seaspray but remains mostly on land and in rock and soil minerals. Eighty per cent of the mined phosphorus is used to make fertilizers.
The general formula of a phosphoric acid is H n−2x+2 P n O 3n−x+1, where n is the number of phosphorus atoms and x is the number of fundamental cycles in the molecule's structure; that is, the minimum number of bonds that would have to be broken to eliminate all cycles.
Phosphorus is used to make nucleic acids and the phospholipids that comprise biological membranes. Sulfur is critical to the three-dimensional shape of proteins. The cycling of these elements is interconnected. For example, the movement of water is critical for leaching sulfur and phosphorus into rivers which can then flow into oceans.