Spatial Scaling in Model Plant Communities
  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. 
Tommaso Zillio, Igor Volkov, Jayanth R. Banavar, Stephen P. Hubbell,   Amos Maritan