News Finding: This is because nature allows for more years for growing, and because larger animals can better withstand times without food or water, and because they become more difficult to bring down by predators as they grow larger.
Paper Finding: This suggests that being crepuscular is a poor strategy for volant species, perhaps because they are exposed to both diurnal and nocturnal predators, resulting in higher extrinsic mortality.
News Context: This is because nature allows for more years for growing, and because larger animals can better withstand times without food or water, and because they become more difficult to bring down by predators as they grow larger. In this new effort, the team in Ireland has found that there are some glaring exceptions to this rule--animals that can fly or that live in trees or in burrows live longer than other animals of the same approximate size without such benefits. On the surface, it seems pretty clear why.
Paper Context: Activity period was important in volant species, with crepuscular species possessing the shortest lifespans. This suggests that being crepuscular is a poor strategy for volant species, perhaps because they are exposed to both diurnal and nocturnal predators, resulting in higher extrinsic mortality. The scarcity of crepuscular volant species (n ¼ 16) in our dataset also suggests that specialization to be active between nocturnal and diurnal periods is a relatively unsuccessful strategy.