Perälä Tommi, Kuparinen Anna
Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Helsinki, PO Box 65, Helsinki 00014, Finland.
Department of Biological and Environmental Science, University of Jyväskylä, PO Box 35, Jyväskylä 40015, Finland
Proc Biol Sci. 2017 Aug 30;284(1861). doi: 10.1098/rspb.2017.1284.
The demographic Allee effect, or depensation, implies positive association between population growth rate and population size at low abundances, thereby lowering growth ability of sparse populations. This can have far-reaching consequences on population recovery ability and colonization success. In the context of marine fishes, there is a widespread perception that Allee effects are rare or non-existent. However, studies that have failed to detect Allee effects in marine fishes have suffered from several fundamental methodological and data limitations. In the present study, we challenge the prevailing perception about the rarity of Allee effects by analysing nine populations of Atlantic herring (), using Bayesian statistical methods. We find that populations of the same species can show either strong evidence for Allee effects or compensation. We explicitly demonstrate how the evidence for Allee effects is strongly provisional on observations made at low population abundances. We contrast our statistical approach with previous attempts to detect Allee effects and illustrate methodological issues that can lead to erroneous conclusions about the nature of population dynamics at low abundance. The present study demonstrates that there is no substantive scientific basis to support the perception that Allee effects are rare or non-existent in marine fishes.
种群阿利效应，即种群数量减少效应，意味着在低丰度时种群增长率与种群大小之间存在正相关，从而降低了稀疏种群的增长能力。这可能会对种群恢复能力和定殖成功产生深远影响。在海洋鱼类的背景下，人们普遍认为阿利效应很少见或不存在。然而，那些未能在海洋鱼类中检测到阿利效应的研究存在一些基本的方法和数据局限性。在本研究中，我们通过使用贝叶斯统计方法分析九个大西洋鲱鱼种群，对关于阿利效应罕见性的普遍看法提出了挑战。我们发现同一物种的种群可能显示出阿利效应或补偿效应的有力证据。我们明确证明了阿利效应的证据在很大程度上取决于在低种群丰度下的观察结果。我们将我们的统计方法与先前检测阿利效应的尝试进行了对比，并说明了可能导致对低丰度种群动态性质得出错误结论的方法学问题。本研究表明，没有实质性的科学依据支持认为海洋鱼类中阿利效应很少见或不存在的观点。
