## The hidden side of the Allee effect: correlated demographic traits and extinction risk in experimental populations

10.24072/pcjournal.41 - Peer Community Journal, Volume 1 (2021), article no. e26.

Because Allee effects (i.e., the presence of positive density-dependence at low population size or density) have major impacts on the dynamics of small populations, they are routinely included in demographic models for the evaluation of extinction risks. However, the structure of most common models implies that other demographic parameters (like the maximum growth rate) are modified by the inclusion of an Allee effect, which also affects in return the extinction risk of the population. Whether such correlations between demographic traits occur in natural populations or merely reflect a practical constraint related to model formalism is of primary importance to understand better the dynamics of small populations. We investigated this question using 30 populations of Trichogramma wasps raised under similar conditions, of which 8 were subject to an Allee effect. We showed that these 8 populations were also characterized by lower maximum growth rate and lower population size, and that their extinction probability was higher than for non-Allee populations. These results provide the first empirical demonstration of a correlation between the presence of positive density-dependence and impaired demographic performance, which increases the extinction risk of a population, especially during the establishment phase.

Published online:
DOI: 10.24072/pcjournal.41
Vercken, Elodie 1; Groussier, Géraldine 1; Lamy, Laurent 1; Mailleret, Ludovic 1, 2

1 Université Côte d’Azur, INRAE, CNRS, ISA – Sophia Antipolis, France
2 Université Côte d’Azur, Inria, INRAE, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Biocore – Sophia Antipolis, France
Copyrights: The authors retain unrestricted copyrights and publishing rights
@article{10_24072_pcjournal_41,
author = {Vercken, Elodie and Groussier, G\'eraldine and Lamy, Laurent and Mailleret, Ludovic},
title = {The hidden side of the {Allee} effect: correlated demographic traits and extinction risk in experimental populations},
journal = {Peer Community Journal},
eid = {e26},
publisher = {Peer Community In},
volume = {1},
year = {2021},
doi = {10.24072/pcjournal.41},
url = {https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal.41/}
}
TY  - JOUR
TI  - The hidden side of the Allee effect: correlated demographic traits and extinction risk in experimental populations
JO  - Peer Community Journal
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021///
VL  - 1
PB  - Peer Community In
UR  - https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal.41/
UR  - https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.41
DO  - 10.24072/pcjournal.41
ID  - 10_24072_pcjournal_41
ER  - 
%0 Journal Article
%T The hidden side of the Allee effect: correlated demographic traits and extinction risk in experimental populations
%J Peer Community Journal
%D 2021
%V 1
%I Peer Community In
%U https://doi.org/10.24072/pcjournal.41
%R 10.24072/pcjournal.41
%F 10_24072_pcjournal_41
Vercken, Elodie; Groussier, Géraldine; Lamy, Laurent; Mailleret, Ludovic. The hidden side of the Allee effect: correlated demographic traits and extinction risk in experimental populations. Peer Community Journal, Volume 1 (2021), article  no. e26. doi : 10.24072/pcjournal.41. https://peercommunityjournal.org/articles/10.24072/pcjournal.41/

Peer reviewed and recommended by PCI : 10.24072/pci.ecology.100078

[1] Abe, J.; Innocent, T. M.; Reece, S. E.; West, S. A. Virginity and the clutch size behavior of a parasitoid wasp where mothers mate their sons, Behavioral Ecology, Volume 21 (2010) no. 4, pp. 730-738 | DOI

[2] Amarasekare, P. Allee Effects in Metapopulation Dynamics, The American Naturalist, Volume 152 (1998) no. 2, pp. 298-302 | DOI

[3] Bajeux, N.; Grognard, F.; Mailleret, L. Influence of the components of propagule pressure, Allee effects, and stochasticity on the time to establish introduced populations, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Volume 471 (2019), pp. 91-107 | DOI

[4] Bates, D.; Mächler, M.; Bolker, B.; Walker, S. Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Usinglme4, Journal of Statistical Software, Volume 67 (2015) no. 1, pp. 1-48 | DOI

[5] Boukal, D. S.; Berec, L. Single-species Models of the Allee Effect: Extinction Boundaries, Sex Ratios and Mate Encounters, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Volume 218 (2002) no. 3, pp. 375-394 | DOI

[6] Cassey, P.; Prowse, T. A. A.; Blackburn, T. M. A population model for predicting the successful establishment of introduced bird species, Oecologia, Volume 175 (2014) no. 1, pp. 417-428 | DOI

[7] Courchamp, F.; Berec, L.; Gascoigne, J. Allee Effects in Ecology and Conservation, Oxford University Press, (2008) | DOI

[8] Dennis, B. Allee effects: population growth, critical density, and the chance of extinction, Natural Resource Modeling, Volume 3 (1989) no. 4, pp. 481-538 | DOI

[9] Dennis, B. Allee effects in stochastic populations, Oikos, Volume 96 (2002) no. 3, pp. 389-401 | DOI

[10] Dennis, B.; Assas, L.; Elaydi, S.; Kwessi, E.; Livadiotis, G. Allee effects and resilience in stochastic populations, Theoretical Ecology, Volume 9 (2015) no. 3, pp. 323-335 | DOI

[11] Drake, J. M. Allee Effects and the Risk of Biological Invasion, Risk Analysis, Volume 24 (2004) no. 4, pp. 795-802 | DOI

[12] Drake, J. M.; Kramer, A. M. Allee Effects, Nature Education Knowledge, Volume 3 (2011) no. 10

[13] Drake, J. M.; Shapiro, J.; Griffen, B. D. Experimental demonstration of a two-phase population extinction hazard, Journal of The Royal Society Interface, Volume 8 (2011) no. 63, pp. 1472-1479 | DOI

[14] Fauvergue, X.; Lo Genco, A.; Lo Pinto, M. Virgins in the wild: mating status affects the behavior of a parasitoid foraging in the field, Oecologia, Volume 156 (2008) no. 4, pp. 913-920 | DOI

[15] Fauvergue, X.; Vercken, E.; Malausa, T.; Hufbauer, R. A. The biology of small, introduced populations, with special reference to biological control, Evolutionary Applications, Volume 5 (2012) no. 5, pp. 424-443 | DOI

[16] Gertzen, E. L.; Leung, B.; Yan, N. D. Propagule pressure, Allee effects and the probability of establishment of an invasive species (Bythotrephes longimanus), Ecosphere, Volume 2 (2011) no. 3 | DOI

[17] Hutchings, J. A. Thresholds for impaired species recovery, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Volume 282 (2015) no. 1809 | DOI

[18] Johnson, D. M.; Liebhold, A. M.; Tobin, P. C.; Bjørnstad, O. N. Allee effects and pulsed invasion by the gypsy moth, Nature, Volume 444 (2006) no. 7117, pp. 361-363 | DOI

[19] Kaul, R. B.; Kramer, A. M.; Dobbs, F. C.; Drake, J. M. Experimental demonstration of an Allee effect in microbial populations, Biology Letters, Volume 12 (2016) no. 4 | DOI

[20] Kot, M.; Lewis, M. A.; van den Driessche, P. Dispersal Data and the Spread of Invading Organisms, Ecology, Volume 77 (1996) no. 7, pp. 2027-2042 | DOI

[21] Kramer, A. M.; Dennis, B.; Liebhold, A. M.; Drake, J. M. The evidence for Allee effects, Population Ecology, Volume 51 (2009) no. 3, pp. 341-354 | DOI

[22] Kuparinen, A.; Keith, D. M.; Hutchings, J. A. Allee Effect and the Uncertainty of Population Recovery, Conservation Biology, Volume 28 (2014) no. 3, pp. 790-798 | DOI

[23] Lande, R. Genetics and Demography in Biological Conservation, Science, Volume 241 (1988) no. 4872, pp. 1455-1460 | DOI

[24] Lande, R. Risks of Population Extinction from Demographic and Environmental Stochasticity and Random Catastrophes, The American Naturalist, Volume 142 (1993) no. 6, pp. 911-927 | DOI

[25] Lande, R. Demographic Stochasticity and Allee Effect on a Scale with Isotropic Noise, Oikos, Volume 83 (1998) no. 2 | DOI

[26] Lewis, M.; Kareiva, P. Allee Dynamics and the Spread of Invading Organisms, Theoretical Population Biology, Volume 43 (1993) no. 2, pp. 141-158 | DOI

[27] Liebhold, A.; Bascompte, J. The Allee effect, stochastic dynamics and the eradication of alien species, Ecology Letters, Volume 6 (2003) no. 2, pp. 133-140 | DOI

[28] Martel V., Sex allocation and mating structure in the egg parasitoids of the genus Trichogramma (Hymenoptera: Trichogrammatidae). Msc Thesis, Mc Gill University, Montréal ((2003))

[29] Mills, N. J.; Lacan, I. Ratio dependence in the functional response of insect parasitoids: evidence from Trichogramma minutum foraging for eggs in small host patches, Ecological Entomology, Volume 29 (2004) no. 2, pp. 208-216 | DOI

[30] Molnár, P. K.; Lewis, M. A.; Derocher, A. E. Estimating Allee Dynamics before They Can Be Observed: Polar Bears as a Case Study, PLoS ONE, Volume 9 (2014) no. 1 | DOI

[31] Myers, R. A.; Barrowman, N. J.; Hutchings, J. A.; Rosenberg, A. A. Population Dynamics of Exploited Fish Stocks at Low Population Levels, Science, Volume 269 (1995) no. 5227, pp. 1106-1108 | DOI

[32] Odum, H. T.; Allee, W. C. A Note on the Stable Point of Populations Showing Both Intraspecific Cooperation and Disoperation, Ecology, Volume 35 (1954) no. 1, pp. 95-97 | DOI

[33] Perälä, T.; Kuparinen, A. Detection of Allee effects in marine fishes: analytical biases generated by data availability and model selection, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, Volume 284 (2017) no. 1861 | DOI

[34] R Core Team, R: a language and environment for statistical computing, (2017)

[35] Robert, F.-A.; Brodeur, J.; Boivin, G. Patch exploitation by non-aggressive parasitoids under intra- and interspecific competition, Entomologia Experimentalis et Applicata, Volume 159 (2016) no. 1, pp. 92-101 | DOI

[36] Roth, G.; Schreiber, S. J. Pushed beyond the brink: Allee effects, environmental stochasticity, and extinction, Journal of Biological Dynamics, Volume 8 (2014) no. 1, pp. 187-205 | DOI

[37] Sæther, B.-E.; Engen, S. Stochastic population theory faces reality in the laboratory, Trends in Ecology & Evolution, Volume 19 (2004) no. 7, pp. 351-353 | DOI

[38] Sæther, B.-E.; Ringsby, T. H.; Røskaft, E.; Saether, B.-E.; Roskaft, E. Life History Variation, Population Processes and Priorities in Species Conservation: Towards a Reunion of Research Paradigms, Oikos, Volume 77 (1996) no. 2 | DOI

[39] Sinclair, J. S.; Arnott, S. E. Strength in size not numbers: propagule size more important than number in sexually reproducing populations, Biological Invasions, Volume 18 (2016) no. 2, pp. 497-505 | DOI

[40] Stenglein, J. L.; Van Deelen, T. R. Demographic and Component Allee Effects in Southern Lake Superior Gray Wolves, PLOS ONE, Volume 11 (2016) no. 3 | DOI

[41] Stephens, P. A.; Sutherland, W. J.; Freckleton, R. P. What Is the Allee Effect?, Oikos, Volume 87 (1999) no. 1, pp. 185-190 | DOI

[42] Tobin, P. C.; Berec, L.; Liebhold, A. M. Exploiting Allee effects for managing biological invasions, Ecology Letters, Volume 14 (2011) no. 6, pp. 615-624 | DOI

[43] Tobin, P. C.; Whitmire, S. L.; Johnson, D. M.; Bjørnstad, O. N.; Liebhold, A. M. Invasion speed is affected by geographical variation in the strength of Allee effects, Ecology Letters, Volume 10 (2006) no. 1, pp. 36-43 | DOI

[44] Veit RR, ; Lewis MA, Dispersal, population growth, and the Allee effect: Dynamics of the house finch invasion of eastern North America, The American Naturalist, Volume 148 (1996), pp. 255-274

[45] Vercken, E.; Vincent, F.; Mailleret, L.; Ris, N.; Tabone, E.; Fauvergue, X. Time-lag in extinction dynamics in experimental populations: evidence for a genetic Allee effect?, Journal of Animal Ecology, Volume 82 (2013) no. 3, pp. 621-631 | DOI

[46] Walter, J. A.; Johnson, D. M.; Haynes, K. J. Spatial variation in Allee effects influences patterns of range expansion, Ecography, Volume 40 (2016) no. 1, pp. 179-188 | DOI

[47] Wang, M.-H.; Kot, M. Speeds of invasion in a model with strong or weak Allee effects, Mathematical Biosciences, Volume 171 (2001) no. 1, pp. 83-97 | DOI

[48] Wittmann, M. J.; Stuis, H.; Metzler, D. Genetic Allee effects and their interaction with ecological Allee effects, Journal of Animal Ecology, Volume 87 (2016) no. 1, pp. 11-23 | DOI

[49] Wood S, Package “mgcv”. Mixed GAM Computation Vehicle with Automatic Smoothness Estimation. Version 1.8-24., (2018)

[50] Zuur A, ; Ieno EN, ; Walker N, ; Saveliev AA, ; Smith GM, Mixed Effects Models and Extensions in Ecology with R, Springer, New York, NY., (2009)

Cited by Sources: