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Myanmar is one of the mangrove-richest countries in the world, providing valuable ecosystem services to people. However, due to deforestation driven primarily by agricultural expansion, Myanmar's mangrove forest cover has declined dramatically over the past few decades, while what remains is still under pressure. To support management planning, accurate quantification of mangrove forest cover changes on a national scale is needed. In this study, we quantified Myanmar's mangrove forest cover changes between 2000 and 2014 using remotely sensed data, examined the environmental impacts of such changes, and estimated the changes in the economic values of mangrove ecosystem services in the country. Results indicate that Myanmar had a net mangrove loss of 191,122 ha over the study period. Since 2000, Myanmar has been losing mangrove forest cover at an alarming rate of 14,619 ha/year (2.2%/year). The loss was predominant in Rakhine and Ayeyarwady. The observed mangrove forest cover loss has resulted in decreased evapotranspiration, carbon stock, and tree cover percentage. Due to deforestation, Myanmar also suffered a net loss of 2,397 million US$/year in its mangrove ecosystem service value (i.e. 28.7% decrease from 2000), in which maintenance of fisheries nursery populations and habitat and coastal protection were among those services that were greatly affected. We suggest that intensive reforestation and mangrove protection programs be implemented immediately. Agroforestry and community forestry programs are encouraged in areas that are under immense pressure from paddy field expansion, fuelwood extraction, charcoal production, and fish and shrimp farming activities. Potential alternative sustainable solutions should include intensive government-led private forest plantations or community-owned forest plantations to be developed with care by local farmers, nongovernmental organizations, and business owners.

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Aims Climate change can substantially alter ecological communities. However, we hypothesized that, even if novel communities emerge, those communities may not be novel in terms of functional composition. To infer the processes associated with rising temperatures, we evaluated elevational taxonomic/functional turnover of plant and invertebrate communities. Because climate change interacts synergistically with other environmental factors, and therefore is not the sole driver of change in ecological communities, we also considered how the taxonomic/functional composition of the communities would be affected by mammalian overgrazing/browsing, which has become prominent in the study region.Location Shiretoko National Park, Shiretoko Peninsular, Hokkaido, Japan.Methods We investigated the diversity of eight groups of organisms (taxa) in forests of northern Japan, and calculated the distance decay of taxonomic/functional similarity (Sørensen's b-diversity) along an elevational gradient. A null model was used to separate functional turnover from taxonomic turnover. We then simulated how taxonomic/functional turnover along the gradient would be changed after non-random loss of species sensitive to mammalian herbivory.Results We found that each group showed elevational decay in taxonomic similarity. Along an elevational gradient, species groups structured by stronger dispersal limitation showed faster species turnover. This suggested differences in the process of climate-induced species reassembly among the groups. We also found that elevational turnover of communities based on functional traits tended to be lower than that based on taxonomic identity for the majority of the groups, supporting our hypothesis of functional redundancy across the elevational gradient. We thus speculated that climate-induced emergence of taxonomically novel communities may have limited influence on critical ecosystem processes supported by functional diversity. Furthermore, while random species loss did not change functional turnover, non-random loss of species attributable to mammalian herbivory substantially accelerated elevational functional turnover of the taxa. This suggested a possible loss of the functional redundancy of communities.Main conclusions Future communities may be novel not simply because climates are changing at unprecedented rates but also because of the synergetic influences of other environmental changes. Thus ecological processes may be more seriously affected in the future than is generally anticipated based on ª 2015 John Wiley

Human voice pitch is highly sexually dimorphic and eminently quantifiable, making it an ideal phenotype for studying the influence of sexual selection. In both traditional and industrial populations, lower pitch in men predicts mating success, reproductive success, and social status and shapes social perceptions, especially those related to physical formidability. Due to practical and ethical constraints however, scant evidence tests the central question of whether male voice pitch and other acoustic measures indicate actual fighting ability in humans. To address this, we examined pitch, pitch variability, and formant position of 475 mixed martial arts (MMA) fighters from an elite fighting league, with each fighter’s acoustic measures assessed from multiple voice recordings extracted from audio or video interviews available online (YouTube, Google Video, podcasts), totaling 1312 voice recording samples. In four regression models each predicting a separate measure of fighting ability (win percentages, number of fights, Elo ratings, and retirement status), no acoustic measure significantly predicted fighting ability above and beyond covariates. However, after fight statistics, fight history, height, weight, and age were used to extract underlying dimensions of fighting ability via factor analysis, pitch and formant position negatively predicted “Fighting Experience” and “Size” factor scores in a multivariate regression model, explaining 3–8% of the variance. Our findings suggest that lower male pitch and formants may be valid cues of some components of fighting ability in men.

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This study takes stock of the confusion that exists around the environmental state of Lake Inle, a flagship destination for tourism in Myanmar. Reports on the dynamics of its iconic floating gardens and on the evolution of the Lake's dimensions in response to land‐use change in the watershed are inconsistent and provide a poor basis for policymaking. Here, we (a) present a critical overview of the literature concerning land degradation around Lake Inle; (b) provide an independent and quantitative reexamination of the Lake's size; (c) carry out a methodic assessment of the history of floating gardens based on written sources, interviews, and high‐resolution imagery from 1967, 1983, 2002, and 2014; and (d) produce the first comprehensive and biseasonal bathymetric survey of the Lake, thereby providing a baseline water volume estimate fit for future monitoring purposes. Results challenge previous reports and show that floating agriculture boomed in the 1970s (11 km2 in 1967 and 29 km2 in 1983), peaked in 2002 (35 km2), then declined slightly (33 km2 in 2014). Our bathymetric survey reveals that the Lake volume at the peak of the 2015 rainy season was 122.6 × 106 m3, with maximum water depths having diminished substantially from 6 m (as reported in 1918) to just 3 m today as a combined result of sediment aggradation and waterlevel decline (−1 m in 25 years). Those dynamics have critical implications for the sustainability of floating agriculture, fishing, and the local tourist economy.

This paper assesses the extent of success and failure of mangrove plantations in Myanmar, restored by local people with the help of foresters under a community forestry program initiated in 1995. The species of these restored plantations are Avicennia officinalis, Avicennia marina and Heritiera fomes, each of which was restored on two plots, one on low and one on high ground, yielding a total of six plots. These plots have been continuously monitored in order to investigate survival and growth rates. The plots were established on abandoned land that had been previously used for paddy cultivation. Cyclone Nargis hit these plantations during the monitoring period, at the beginning of May, 2008. As a consequence, the survival rates of A. officinalis on low ground and A. marina on high ground declined slightly, but the overall affect was not severe. Excluding individuals affected by the cyclone, height and diameter growth of A. officinalis and A. marina were significantly higher on low ground than on high ground, i.e. on sites thought to be consistently similar to the natural habitats of these species. Contrary to these two Avicennia species, the height growth of H. fomes was higher on high ground than on low ground; the diameter growth was not significantly different. As the growth of H. fomes was very slow, however, it is still not possible to describe the differences clearly. This study may provide useful guidelines for foresters and local people to establish successful mangrove restorations and to predict production from community-owned mangrove forests.