Figure 6

Effects of decreasing birth-death equilibrium on MCEM²and Poisson method performance. Boxplots (displaying median, first and third quartiles, and most extreme data point within 1.5 ×the interquartile range from the box) summarize mean relative errors of MCEM² and the Poisson method applied to 20 birth-death datasets for each of five models (true parameter values listed on x-axis). Models are sorted in decreasing order of the equilibrium value of S, ranging from 5 to .1. MCEM² performance does not vary appreciably across the different models, while the Poisson method exhibits increasing error with decreasing equilibrium value.