The meta-Allee effect: A generalization from intermittent metapopulations

Abstract Intermittent population trajectories are likely to emerge in almost any population that faces a predator yet has a refuge from that predator. Using the well-known model of Pomeau and Manneville for intermittent populations, a collection of a group of inherently unstable subpopulations can survive through the balance of extinction and migration rates, which is a metapopulation. This formulation also generates a meta-Allee point, which is to say a minimal number of subpopulations that must exist to sustain the population over the long term.