Fig. 1

Boxplots of estimated period mean and median survival times for simulation scenarios 1–4. The blue dashed line is the average of the true mean survival times for the last 36 years. The orange dashed line is the average of the true median survival times for the last 36 years. Each grey point represents the result of a single simulation run, with the means and medians estimated via the period approach, using only the simulated individuals who died in the last 36 years within that run. The black point is the average value of the grey points over 1000 simulation runs