Ankit Raj 

School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences 

Advisor: Prof. Jenny McGuire (School of Biological Sciences; School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences) 

Fire and Mammal Communities through Time: Past, Present, and Future 

Monday, October 26, 2026, 3:00 PM 
IBB Suddath Seminar Room (1128) 

Committee Members:

Dr. Ben Freeman (School of Biological Sciences) 

Prof. Joseph Lachance (School of Biological Sciences) 

Prof. Lin Jiang (School of Biological Sciences) 

Abstract 

Welcome to the Pyrocene! Wildfires have intensified so much that fire historians now call the present the age of fire. Fire regimes, the frequency, intensity, and severity of fire, are changing worldwide, but most studies of mammals and fire cover only the first few years after a single fire. A change in fire regime happens over centuries to millennia, and paleoecological records are the only archives that capture long-term changes in both fire regimes and mammals. In my dissertation, I ask how changing fire regimes affect mammal communities in the past, present, and projected future. I combine charcoal records, mammal fossils, archaeological dates, and climate simulations to understand how much of the change in mammal communities is explained uniquely by fire, beyond climate and humans. I partition this variance at three spatial scales: a single cave, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, and North America. I then determine which community traits make mammal communities vulnerable to long-term changes in fire regime. Finally, I use these results to strengthen conservation efforts by identifying where fire spread and mammal movement overlap with vulnerable communities, and where firebreaks can be placed without blocking mammal movement corridors.