Evolution of the area covered by a lichen community.

<p>We compare the predicted evolution of covered area in the field sample shown in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0012820#pone-0012820-g001" target="_blank">Fig. 1A</a> with the model Eq. (5) marked by the line. Each point represents the total area covered at the time of nucleation of a new lichen and is computed from the Monte Carlo simulations. The points are averaged over different runs of the algorithm on the same sample using random initial configurations and the corresponding error bars (standard deviation) are shown at representative points.