We present an analytically tractable variant of the voter model that provides a quantitatively accurate description of beta-diversity (two-point correlation function) in two tropical forests. The model exhibits novel scaling behavior that leads to links between ecological measures such as relative species abundance and the species area relationship.
@article{arxiv.q-bio/0508033,
title = {Spatial Scaling in Model Plant Communities},
author = {Tommaso Zillio and Igor Volkov and Jayanth R. Banavar and Stephen P. Hubbell and Amos Maritan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:q-bio/0508033},
year = {2007}
}