Extinction conditions for isolated populations with Allee effect

One of the main ecological phenomenons is the Allee effect [1-3], in which a positive benefit from the presence of conspecifics arises. In this work we describe the dynamical behavior of a population with Allee effect in a finite domain that is surrounded by a completely hostile environment. Using spectral methods to rewrite the local density of habitants we are able to determine the critical patch size and the bifurcation diagram, hence characterizing the stability of possible solutions, for different ways to introduce the Allee effect in the reaction-diffusion equations. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.