title: Allee effects in tritrophic food chains: some insights in pest biological control.
abstract: Release of natural enemies to control pest populations is a common strategy in biological control. However, its effectiveness is supposed to be impaired, among other factors, by Allee effects in the biological control agent and by the fact that introduced pest natural enemies interact with some native species of the ecosystem. In this work, we devise a tritrophic food chain model where the assumptions previously raised are proved correct when a hyperpredator attacks the introduced pest natural enemy by a functional response type 2 or 3. Moreover, success of pest control is shown to be related to the release of large amounts (i.e., inundative releases) of natural enemies.
authors.affiliation: Laboratório Nacional de Computação Científica, Av. Getúlio Vargas, 333, Quitandinha, Petrópolis (RJ) 25651-070, Brazil.
authors.forename: Michel Iskin da S
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Costa
authors.affiliation: Laboratório Nacional de Computação Científica, Av. Getúlio Vargas, 333, Quitandinha, Petrópolis (RJ) 25651-070, Brazil lanjos@lncc.br.
authors.forename: Lucas
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Dos Anjos
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D020387:Food Chain; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D010572:Pest Control, Biological
keywords: Allee effect; inundative release; pest biological control; tritrophic food chain