Not sure what you mean exactly by "generative models" but it reminds me of Rohde et al 2004 (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02842) which is all about modelling this sort of thing. In fact, some of the results of Rohde's paper are quantitative things which Rohde et al discovered by simulation and which my paper provides theoretical explanation for (see my paper's Proposition 6 and the last sentence of the abstract of Rohde et al).