Table 2. Main configuration of the simulation and resampling procedures used for assessing the performance of maximum likelihood mixed models.

Main configuration of the simulation and resampling procedures used for assessing the performance of maximum likelihood mixed models. Observed cohorts corresponded to juvenile Sparus aurata collected from four Mediterranean lagoons in three highly contrasting years. Virtual cohorts corresponded to artificial data, aimed to expand the observed range of separation among nursery signatures k and y subscripts represent nursey-sources and cohorts, respectively. Observed mean vectors and covariance matrices available in Appendix 2.

	Observed cohorts	Virtual cohorts
Number of nursery sources included in nursery-source datasets (KS)	0–4	0–4
Number of cohorts	3	6
Nursery-signature mean vectors (μk,y)	Observed μk,y	μk,2010 scaled to match target separation
Nursery-signature covariance matrices Σk,y	Observed Σk,y	Observed Σk,2010
Average Mahalanobis distance among nursery-signature centroids $({\Sigma }_y^2)$	Observed ${\Delta }_y^2=1.18-3.29$	Simulated ${\Delta }_y^2$ = {0.5, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, 5.5}
Mixing proportion of nursery-sources in the mixed-stock dataset pk,y	pk,y = {0.1, 0,2, 0.3, 0.4}, randomly assigned to sources within runs	pk,y = {0.1, 0,2, 0.3, 0.4}, randomly assigned to sources within runs