Demographic and Component Allee Effects in Southern Lake Superior Gray Wolves
Recovering populations of carnivores suffering Allee effects risk extinction because positive population growth requires a minimum number of cooperating individuals. Conservationists seldom consider these issues in planning for carnivore recovery because of data limitations, but ignoring Allee effec...
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ftrepec:oai:RePEc:plo:pone00:0150535 2023-05-15T15:50:35+02:00 Demographic and Component Allee Effects in Southern Lake Superior Gray Wolves Jennifer L Stenglein Timothy R Van Deelen https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0150535 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0150535&type=printable unknown https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0150535 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0150535&type=printable article ftrepec 2020-12-04T13:32:40Z Recovering populations of carnivores suffering Allee effects risk extinction because positive population growth requires a minimum number of cooperating individuals. Conservationists seldom consider these issues in planning for carnivore recovery because of data limitations, but ignoring Allee effects could lead to overly optimistic predictions for growth and underestimates of extinction risk. We used Bayesian splines to document a demographic Allee effect in the time series of gray wolf (Canis lupus) population counts (1980–2011) in the southern Lake Superior region (SLS, Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan, USA) in each of four measures of population growth. We estimated that the population crossed the Allee threshold at roughly 20 wolves in four to five packs. Maximum per-capita population growth occurred in the mid-1990s when there were approximately 135 wolves in the SLS population. To infer mechanisms behind the demographic Allee effect, we evaluated a potential component Allee effect using an individual-based spatially explicit model for gray wolves in the SLS region. Our simulations varied the perception neighborhoods for mate-finding and the mean dispersal distances of wolves. Simulation of wolves with long-distance dispersals and reduced perception neighborhoods were most likely to go extinct or experience Allee effects. These phenomena likely restricted population growth in early years of SLS wolf population recovery. Article in Journal/Newspaper Canis lupus gray wolf RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) Southern Lake ENVELOPE(-94.333,-94.333,62.217,62.217) |
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RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) |
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description |
Recovering populations of carnivores suffering Allee effects risk extinction because positive population growth requires a minimum number of cooperating individuals. Conservationists seldom consider these issues in planning for carnivore recovery because of data limitations, but ignoring Allee effects could lead to overly optimistic predictions for growth and underestimates of extinction risk. We used Bayesian splines to document a demographic Allee effect in the time series of gray wolf (Canis lupus) population counts (1980–2011) in the southern Lake Superior region (SLS, Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan, USA) in each of four measures of population growth. We estimated that the population crossed the Allee threshold at roughly 20 wolves in four to five packs. Maximum per-capita population growth occurred in the mid-1990s when there were approximately 135 wolves in the SLS population. To infer mechanisms behind the demographic Allee effect, we evaluated a potential component Allee effect using an individual-based spatially explicit model for gray wolves in the SLS region. Our simulations varied the perception neighborhoods for mate-finding and the mean dispersal distances of wolves. Simulation of wolves with long-distance dispersals and reduced perception neighborhoods were most likely to go extinct or experience Allee effects. These phenomena likely restricted population growth in early years of SLS wolf population recovery. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Jennifer L Stenglein Timothy R Van Deelen |
spellingShingle |
Jennifer L Stenglein Timothy R Van Deelen Demographic and Component Allee Effects in Southern Lake Superior Gray Wolves |
author_facet |
Jennifer L Stenglein Timothy R Van Deelen |
author_sort |
Jennifer L Stenglein |
title |
Demographic and Component Allee Effects in Southern Lake Superior Gray Wolves |
title_short |
Demographic and Component Allee Effects in Southern Lake Superior Gray Wolves |
title_full |
Demographic and Component Allee Effects in Southern Lake Superior Gray Wolves |
title_fullStr |
Demographic and Component Allee Effects in Southern Lake Superior Gray Wolves |
title_full_unstemmed |
Demographic and Component Allee Effects in Southern Lake Superior Gray Wolves |
title_sort |
demographic and component allee effects in southern lake superior gray wolves |
url |
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0150535 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0150535&type=printable |
long_lat |
ENVELOPE(-94.333,-94.333,62.217,62.217) |
geographic |
Southern Lake |
geographic_facet |
Southern Lake |
genre |
Canis lupus gray wolf |
genre_facet |
Canis lupus gray wolf |
op_relation |
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0150535 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0150535&type=printable |
_version_ |
1766385574223020032 |