Seeing the Big- to Fine-Grained Picture: Exploring the Baseline Status of Mammal Occupancy Across Myanmar Using Scale-Optimised Modelling

Aim

Myanmar, an Indo-Burmese biodiversity hotspot, lacks baseline data on species occurrence and distribution. This hinders biodiversity monitoring and optimisation of conservation and development plans. We aim to document baseline mammal occupancy, interactions with environmental factors and scale-dependent responses.

Location

Hkakaborazi National Park, Htamanthi Wildlife Sanctuary, Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park, Rakhine Yoma Elephant Range, Say Taung and Myinmoletkhat Key Biodiversity Areas distributed across Myanmar.

Methods

Camera trap data throughout Myanmar were used to analyse species occupancy. We conducted a multiscale hierarchical spatial modelling process, using local and pooled data across Myanmar. We also optimised spatial scale across five scales and six predictors, using univariate occupancy models. We then selected scale-optimised variables for multivariate modelling, repeating this process for each species across local, regional and national datasets.

Results

The study identified 47 terrestrial species and observed strong scale-dependent nonstationarity in occupancy estimates. Relationships with environmental variables differed among species and were highly scale dependent. Importantly, occupancy estimates produced by pooling data across sites were greatly different from any of the estimates for the individual sites, suggesting that high heterogeneity in occurrence and abundance across sites among species requires local or nested occupancy estimates to account for spatial heterogeneity and variation.

Main Conclusions

Future conservation efforts should focus on Northern Myanmar if range-restricted and rare species are to be protected, while focus should still be given to common species which serve as potential indicators of overall community structure. The nonstationarity of occupancy results from different datasets underscores the potential for misleading interpretations from aggregated data in nonstationary ecological systems. Metareplicated analyses of local, geographically and ecologically proximal regional datasets provide an important view of spatial variation in occupancy patterns guiding conservation design and improving understanding of the drivers of biodiversity patterns and change across large regions, such as Southeast Asia.