Evolution of core masses. Left panel: median values of the maximum ($M_{\text{core}}^{\max }$, red) and the minimum ($M_{\text{core}}^{\text{min}}$, blue) core masses revealed within different bins of clump L/M (delimited by vertical dashed grey lines). The respective colored shaded areas mark the 25th and 75th percentiles of the two distributions within the same L/M bins. Right Panel: combined mass of the cores $\left(M_{\text{core\hspace{0.17em}}}^{\text{tot\hspace{0.17em}}}\right)$ minus the mass of the MMC within each clump, as a function of the latter. Data points are color-coded by the clump L/M. The solid black line draws the trend of the median value of the quantity on the y-axis in given bins of $M_{\text{core\hspace{0.17em}}}^{\max }$. The dashed grey line corresponds to the $M_{\text{core\hspace{0.17em}}}^{\max }=50\%M_{\text{core\hspace{0.17em}}}^{\text{tot}}$ relation, while the shaded grey area marks (from top to bottom) the 25–75% range.