Fig. 5

Expected value and 95% confidence intervals of the estimated number of fecund female worms for increasing number of female parental genotypes identified by sibship reconstruction using informative prior distributions. The posterior distribution of the number of fecund female worms is denoted N and is plotted against the number of female parental genotypes n identified by sibship reconstruction. The line corresponds to the expected value (mean) E(N) and the shaded bands denote 95% confidence intervals (CIs). E(N) and 95% CIs are derived from the posterior distribution of N, given n and an informative negative binomial prior distribution for N. The mean W and overdispersion parameter k are: W = 20 and k = 0.5 in panel a; W = 20 and k = 1 in panel b; W = 45 and k = 0.5 in panel c, and W = 45 and k = 1 in panel d. In each panel the dashed line corresponds to the relationship E(N) = n. The number of sampled miracidial offspring m, increases from 5 to 40 per host, from light to dark blue