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.