Fire-driven animal evolution in the Pyrocene.

Fire-driven animal evolution may occur rapidly in the Pyrocene, with potentially significant implications for biodiversity conservation. Fire is an important evolutionary force that exerts strong selective pressure on many domains of life on Earth, including animals. Innovative research has demonstrated genetic evolution by animals in response to fire and fire regimes, and suggests that evolution in wild populations can occur more quickly than was previously thought. Fire regimes are a major agent of evolution in terrestrial animals. Changing fire regimes and the capacity for rapid evolution in wild animal populations suggests the potential for rapid, fire-driven adaptive animal evolution in the Pyrocene. Fire drives multiple modes of evolutionary change, including stabilizing, directional, disruptive, and fluctuating selection, and can strongly influence gene flow and genetic drift. Ongoing and future research in fire-driven animal evolution will benefit from further development of generalizable hypotheses, studies conducted in highly responsive taxa, and linking fire-adapted phenotypes to their underlying genetic basis. A better understanding of evolutionary responses to fire has the potential to positively influence conservation strategies that embrace evolutionary resilience to fire in the Pyrocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]