The interplay among Allee effects, omnivory and inundative releases in a pest biological control model

• We devised an omnivory dynamical model to describe biological pest control.
• Pest and agent have Allee effects and are consumed by an omnivorous predator.
• Pest extinction is related to inundative releases of agent.
• Allee effect in the agent and omnivorous predator density generate similar dynamics.

Failures of biological control strategies are attributed, among varied explanations, to the action of Allee effects on the agent and the evidence that these released enemies not only interact with the target pest, but also with other native species of the local ecosystem. By means of a theoretical omnivory dynamical model we show that these explanations are qualitatively coherent with the results of the proposed theoretical omnivory dynamical model and that pest eradication or suppression is strongly related to inundative releases of the pest natural enemies.