PARENT SESSION
Poster Session 20: Invasive Species
Wednesday, August 10, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM, Exhibit Hall 220 A-E, Level 2, Palais des congrès de Montréal
Establishing a beachhead: A stochastic Allee effect model applied to species invasion.
Ackleh, Azmy1, Allen, Linda2, Carter, Jacoby*,3, 1 Department of Mathematics, Lafayette, LA, USA2 Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Lubbock, Texas, USA3 U.S. Geological Survey, Lafayette, LA, USA
ABSTRACT- We have formulated a stochastic spatially explicit population model with an Allee effect in order to explore how invasive species may become established. In our model, we varied the degree of migration between local populations and used an Allee effect with stochastic birth and death rates. A successful invasion occured when any population exceeds the Allee effect threshold. Because of the stochastic component, population sizes below the Allee effect threshold may still had a high probability for successful invasion. The larger the network of populations, the greater the probability of an invasion occurring at any given initial population size. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that in a metapopulation of invaders where none of the populations have reached the Allee effect threshold, it is better to reduce all populations a small amount rather than reduce the number of populations in the network if the goal is to prevent a successful invasion
Key words: Allee effect, stochastic, invasion, model