Temporary Allee effects among non-stationary recruitment dynamics in depleted gadid and flatfish populations

We investigated whether low-abundance recruitment dynamics can change in time between compensation and depensation, the latter implying the presence of the Allee effect. For this, we studied the stock-recruitment time series of 17 gadid and flatfish populations in the RAM Legacy Stock Assessment Database using a Bayesian change point model. The recruitment dynamics were represented with the sigmoidal Beverton-Holt and the Saila-Lorda stock-recruitment models, and the parameters of the models were allowed to shift at a priori unknown change points.