Natural beekeeping is an alternative livelihood for poor people in rural areas with poor accessibility and important for maintaining the balance of the ecosystem. We set out to answer the following two questions: (a) Can beekeeping really provide a significant contribution to local people's income generation? (b) Do beekeepers have a strong willingness to protect natural forest? To do this, we systematically sampled and interviewed 60 beekeepers and 60 nonbeekeepers from 12 villages in three districts of Oudomxay Province, Lao PDR. We found that beekeeping households have a significant marginally higher income compared with nonbeekeeping households. Meanwhile, beekeepers also showed a significant concern for forest protection. Factors constraining the sustainability of beekeeping include chemical pesticide use, lack of technology, and several others. Governmental agencies and conservation organizations thus could promote natural beekeeping in rural areas for both a partial income source and regional biodiversity conservation.

Southeast Asia (SEA) has seen strong climatic oscillations and fluctuations in sea levels during the Quaternary. The impact of past climate changes on the evolution and distribution of local flora in SEA is still poorly understood. Here we aim to infer how the Quaternary climate change affects the evolutionary process and range shifts in two pine species. We investigated the population genetic structure and diversity using cytoplasmic DNA markers, and performed ecological niche modeling to reconstruct the species past distribution and to project range shift under future climates. We found substantial gene flow across the continuous distribution of the subtropical Pinus yunnanensis. In contrast, the tropical Pinus kesiya showed a strong population structure in accordance with its disjunct distribution across montane islands in Indochina and the Philippines. A broad hybrid zone of the two species occurs in southern Yunnan. Asymmetric introgression from the two species was detected in this zone with dominant mitochondrial gene flow from P. yunnanensis and chloroplast gene flow from P. kesiya. The observed population structure suggests a typical postglaciation expansion in P. yunnanensis, and a glacial expansion and interglacial contraction in P. kesiya. Ecological niche modeling supports the inferred demographic history and predicts a decrease in range size for P. kesiya under future climates. Our results suggest that tropical pine species in SEA have undergone evolutionary trajectories different from high latitude species related to their Quaternary climate histories. We also illustrate the need for urgent conservation actions in this fragmented landscape.