Stellar mass completeness limits. The three panels show, from left to right, the density of the total, star-forming, and quiescent samples with their respective mass completeness limits. The limits are derived in discrete z-bins following Pozzetti et al. (2010) with magnitude limits adopted from IRAC channel 1 (filled circles), then interpolated with Eqs. (3)–(5), respectively, resulting in the solid lines. For quiescent galaxies, consistent estimates using K_s are also shown (empty circles). To verify these estimates we compute conservative mass limits from simulated spectra following a delta-like burst at z = 15 which are normalized separately to the K_s and channel 1 magnitude limits; they are shown by the dotted and solid red lines, respectively. See the text for details.