Comparison of the VUDS+ spectroscopic sample and the underlying parent sample. Left: rest-frame color-stellar mass of of objects across all three VUDS fields in the range 2 ≤ z_spec ≤ 5 that have a secure spectroscopic redshift and meet the observed-frame NIR magnitude cuts discussed in Sect. 2.4. The color bar indicates the number of galaxies within each narrow color and stellar mass bin. Area-normalized histograms of color and stellar mass for the VUDS+ z_spec sample are shown on the sides of the plot. The contours indicate the density of the parent photometric sample in this space and are spaced in equal logarithmic steps of 0.2 dex starting at N_phot = 15. The offset between the peak of the photometric and spectroscopic samples is ∼0.3 dex in stellar mass, with the photometric sample peaking at lower stellar masses. Right: same as the left panel, except the color bar now indicates the fraction of z_phot objects in each color and stellar mass bin that have secure spectral redshifts. The total number of photometric objects and the number of photometric objects required to fall in a two-dimensional bin in order for that bin to be plotted are indicated in the top left. Area normalized histograms of the full z_phot and VUDS+ z_spec sample are shown on the sides of the plot. The offset of ∼0.3 dex in stellar mass between the peak of the photometric and spectroscopic samples is also seen here, with the former peaking at lower stellar masses. The contours indicate the density of the spectral sample (i.e., the same as is shown in the left panel) and are spaced in equal logarithmic steps of 0.2 dex starting at N_spec = 5.