TY - JOUR T1 - A cascade of destabilizations: combining <em>Wolbachia</em> and Allee effects to eradicate insect pests JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/064774 SP - 064774 AU - Julie C. Blackwood AU - Roger Vargas, Jr. AU - Xavier Fauvergue Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/07/20/064774.abstract N2 - The management of insect pests has long been dominated by the use chemical insecticides, with the aim of instantaneously killing enough individuals to limit their damage. To minimize unwanted consequences to the environment, some more recent novel approaches propose biological controls that take advantage of intrinsic demographic processes to eliminate pest populations.We address the feasibility of a novel pest management strategy based on the integration of Wolbachia-induced cytoplasmic incompatibility and the enhancement of a pre-existing Allee effect via mating disruption.A stochastic population model is developed that accounts for Wolbachia-induced cytoplasmic incompatibilities in addition to an Allee effect that arises from mating failures at low population density. Simulations were run with two objectives: quantifying how cytoplasmic incompatibility and the Allee effect interact to drive insect pest populations toward extinction, and delineating a strategy based on the introduction of Wolbachia-infected insects into a population where a mate-finding Allee effect is enhanced by mating disruption.Our modeling results demonstrate that Wolbachia-induced cytoplasmic incompatibility and the Allee effect act independently from one an other; the Allee effect does not modify the Wolbachia-invasion threshold, and cytoplasmic incompatibility has only a marginal effect on the Allee threshold. Nonetheless, when induced in concert, the two processes can drive even large populations to extinction. Importantly, simulations with successive introductions of two incompatible Wolbachia strains into a population where an Allee effect is enhanced by a realistic application of mating disruption suggest that even large pest populations could be driven to extinction.Our study provides novel and tangible perspectives for the use of cytoplasmic incompatibility and the Allee effect to eradicate insect pests. More generally, it points on the importance of transient dynamics, and the relevance of manipulating a cascade of destabilizatons for pest management. . . . ER -