Sizing the star cluster population of the Large Magellanic Cloud
  The number of star clusters that populate the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) at
deprojected distances < 4 deg has been recently found to be nearly double the
known size of the system. Because of the unprecedented consequences of this
outcome in our knowledge of the LMC cluster formation and dissolution
histories, we closely revisited such a compilation of objects and found that
only ~ 35 per cent of the previously known catalogued clusters has been
included. The remaining entries are likely related to stellar overdensities of
the LMC composite star field, because there is a remarkable enhancement of
objects with assigned ages older than log(t yr-1) ~ 9.4, which contrasts with
the existence of the LMC cluster age gap; the assumption of a cluster formation
rate similar to that of the LMC star field does not help to conciliate so large
amount of clusters either; and nearly 50 per cent of them come from cluster
search procedures known to produce more than 90 per cent of false detections.
The lack of further analyses to confirm the physical reality as genuine star
clusters of the identified overdensities also glooms those results. We support
that the actual size of the LMC main body cluster population is close to that
previously known.
