Fig. 2

Diagrams of the biological process (a) and the observational process (b) used in multi-event CMR models. The diagram a describes the initial states and the conditional transitions between states from one sampling session to the next and the diagram b describes the recorded events for each cat at a given sampling session. The names of parameters corresponding to transitions and events and the effects tested on these parameters are indicated under each step of the processes. Effects written in bold correspond to the effects considered in the initial model. The detailed matrices used to estimate each parameter are presented in Additional file 1