Invading the ideal free distribution

Abstract

Recently, the ideal free dispersal strategy has been proven to be evolutionarily stable in the spatially discrete as well as continuous setting. That is, at equilibrium a species adopting the strategy is immune against invasion by any species carrying a different dispersal strategy, other conditions being held equal. In this paper, we consider a two-species competition model where one of the species adopts an ideal free dispersal strategy, but is penalized by a weak Allee effect. We will show rigorously in this case that the ideal free disperser is invasible by a range of non-ideal free strategies, illustrating the trade-off between the advantage of being an ideal free disperser and the setback caused by the weak Allee effect. Moreover, an integral criterion is given to determine the stability/instability of one of the semi-trivial steady states, which is always linearly neutrally stable due to the degeneracy caused by the weak Allee effect.