and represent extreme transformations in the life of a dI. However, in this work we focus on the internal secular evolution of isolated BCDs, and avoid discussing mergers and interactions.

Compared with typical dIs, BCDs have been found to be especially compact, in their underlying stellar and HI distributions [@papaderos96; @vanzee98; @janowiecki14; @lelli14]. This compactness may be related to their ability to host such intense starbursts. When parametrizing the strength of a star-forming event, the birthrate parameter ($b$$=$SFR$/$$\langle$SFR$\rangle$, see Section \[bstrength\]) is often used, which compares the current star formation with the lifetime average. In the local universe, intense star-forming galaxies are rare as only $\sim$$1\%$ of star-forming galaxies are considered starbursts with $b\ge3$ [@bergvall15]. When combining this rarity with the stochastic nature of star-formation in dwarf galaxies [e.g., @lee09; @weisz12; @bauer13], it would appear that dwarf galaxies can experience increases and decreases in their star formation rate, and only a small fraction are starbursting at any given time. Perhaps the especially-compact BCDs are able to burst more effectively than typical dIs, and so can reach higher SFR during their periods of starburst.

To compare the star formation properties and evolutionary history of BCDs and dIs from the Local Volume 