Invasion pinning in a periodically fragmented habitat

Abstract

Biological invasions can cause great damage to existing ecosystems around the world. Most landscapes in which such invasions occur are heterogeneous. To evaluate possible management options, we need to understand the interplay between local growth conditions and individual movement behaviour. In this paper, we present a geometric approach to studying pinning or blocking of a bistable travelling wave, using ideas from the theory of symmetric dynamical systems. These ideas are exploited to make quantitative predictions about how spatial heterogeneities in dispersal and/or reproduction rates contribute to halting biological invasion fronts in reaction-diffusion models with an Allee effect. Our theoretical predictions are confirmed using numerical simulations, and their ecological implications are discussed.