Mean fragmentation scale as a function of the GMC mass. The curve shows the peak of Gaussian distributions fitted to the (stacked) histogram of initial separations of systems formed via core fragmentation pathways plotted in Fig. 9. The error bars are the width of the Gaussian distributions and not the error on the peaks. The dashed line shows the theoretical prediction from assuming that cores on average can be described as critical Bonnor-Ebert spheres.