The 1/Vmax SMF for the high-redshift samples. The 1/Vmax SMF for the high-redshift samples. Error bars take into account random Poisson noise as well as the scatter between the MC samples due to photometric redshift uncertainty. The black circles show the mass bins included in the χ2 fitting to the Schechter (1976) functions based on the stellar mass limits described in the text. The dashed and dotted lines show the SMF calculated by applying the best-fitting mass-to-light ratio (including nebular emission, see Table 3) to the literature LF at each redshift with a scatter of 0.2 (dashed) and 0.5 (dotted) dex. For the z ∼ 4 bin, the Schecter fit of Bouwens et al. (2007) was used, whilst at z ∼ 5 and 6 and z ∼ 7 the fits of Bouwens et al. (2012a) and McLure et al. (2013), respectively, were used to generate the luminosity distribution. We also show using the error bars at the top of each panel the cosmic variance expected for galaxies of stellar mass ≈109.5 M⊙, as predicted by the method outlined in Moster et al. (2011). K. Duncan et al. MNRAS 2014;444:2960-2984 © 2014 The Authors Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Royal Astronomical Society