Table 1: The fraction of each merger channel which contributes to our synthetic, standard Z=0.02 early-R star population as defined in Sect. 2.5. The left column labels the channel (R1...11), the middle column the relative formation rate for each channel and the right column the relative number of early-R stars (assuming a constant star formation rate and the Kroupa et al. 1993 IMF). The missing channels do not contribute to our R star population and channel R4 is not a merger (we identify these with the CH stars and treat them separately, see Sect. 3.3).

Channel	Formation rate	Number fraction
R3	0.766	0.705
R5	0.016	0.041
R6	0.169	0.196
R7	0.002	0.005
R8	0.014	0.004
R11	0.033	0.048