Hi Francesco,

You could assess the medium term survival probability of populations using population viavility analysis software that incorporates risks linked to small populations.

However, you will never determine the consequences of stochastic phenomena with cetainty, by definition.

It depends strongly of the population size. A "small" population of insects has little to do with a population of bears. To detect precisely the Allee effect, you have to show that the population growth rate is inverse density dependent: the smaller the population, the lower the growth rate. You need to have at hand the data of several generations. Compute the lambda (or r equally) for each couple of successive generations , and plot it against the population density of the first generation (or year) of the couple. A linear relation indicates no density dependence, a tendency toward a sill for high density indicate positive density dependence, an exageration of the slope at low densities indicates an Allee effect. I agree with Jabi: stochasticity prevents from predicting the future of small populations, and if few data are available, viability analysis will not give much insight...

I agree with Jean-Sébastien, viability analysis wont't help much, but can provide insights on the effect size of diverse management decisions.

However, the uncertainty (coefficient of variance) associated to viability estimations is often so high that prevents sound conclusions.

Thank you all!