Fig. 4

Robustness of the different fitting methods to variation in sampling time-interval. Fitting results correspond to the lognormal distribution. a Estimated parameter values (mean ± se). The solid and dashed lines indicate the original values of the location (μ) and variance (σ) parameters, respectively. Where error bars are undistinguishable, it means that standard errors are smaller than the mean-value dots. b KS statistic (mean ± se). c Fitting performance of the CD-ML method for different lengths in sampling time-intervals, estimated by the KS statistic. Time-intervals varied in a regular way over the whole sampling period (1, 2 or 4 h up to 52 h), around the distribution mode (1, 2 or 4 h during the first 8 h and 4 h afterwards), in the tail of the distribution (1 h up to 8 h and 2, 4 or 8 h afterwards), and the last time-interval (stopping sampling at 36, 24 or 12 h after propagule ingestion up to 52 h, the time of the last sampling)