Distribution of sSFR vs. M_⋆ for VUDS galaxies in several redshift bins with medians ranging from z ~ 0.4 to z ~ 5. VUDS galaxies with redshifts ~ 100% reliable (flags 3 and 4, see Le Fèvre et al. 2014) are plotted with filled (coloured) heavy symbols, while galaxies with redshifts ~ 70 − 75% reliable (flag 2) are indicated with light grey open symbols. The stellar mass limit above which the median sSFR is computed is indicated by the vertical dashed lines in this panel, chosen to be M_⋆ ≥ 5 × 10⁹M_⊙ for z ≤ 1.5 and M_⋆ ≥ 10¹⁰M_⊙ for z> 1.5. The limit in the data as imposed by the VUDS selection function is indicated by the dot-dash line in each panel, as validated imposing a similar selection function on the Wang et al. (2008) SAM. The median sSFRs above the mass limits are indicated by the large coloured squares. The error bars represent the error on the median from the 1σ dispersion in the data and the N galaxies in the bin; they are lower than the size of the data points, except for z< 0.7.