Figure 3

The distribution of mutual interference values in the literature from potentially biased methods. A. The distribution of m estimates gathered from studies in the literature that used the potentially biased approach of Method 4 (see " Approaches to estimating mutual interference" for details). This histogram shows that most estimates of mutual interference using this approach are similar to the unbiased approaches, but there are several large estimates that were produced with very low confidence (see Additional file 1 - data set). The special cases of prey dependence, when m = 0, and ratio dependence, when m = -1 are shown. B. The distribution of m estimates using the new approach of Method 5. This histogram shows that most estimates of mutual interference using this approach are similar to the unbiased approaches, but fitting of the whole functional response model often failed, and thus most of these are produced using the reduced power-function alternative.