Repetitive DNA sequences derived from transposable elements (TE) are distributed 
in a non-random way, co-clustering with other classes of repeat elements, genes 
and other genomic components. In a previous work we reported power-law-like size 
distributions (linearity in log-log scale) in the spatial arrangement of Alu and 
LINE1 elements in the human genome. Here we investigate the large-scale features 
of the spatial arrangement of all principal classes of TEs in 14 genomes from 
phylogenetically distant organisms by studying the size distribution of 
inter-repeat distances. Power-law-like size distributions are found to be 
widespread, extending up to several orders of magnitude. In order to understand 
the emergence of this distributional pattern, we introduce an evolutionary 
scenario, which includes (i) Insertions of DNA segments (e.g., more recent 
repeats) into the considered sequence and (ii) Eliminations of members of the 
studied TE family. In the proposed model we also incorporate the potential for 
transposition events (characteristic of the DNA transposons' life-cycle) and 
segmental duplications. Simulations reproduce the main features of the observed 
size distributions. Furthermore, we investigate the effects of various genomic 
features on the presence and extent of power-law size distributions including TE 
class and age, mode of parental TE transmission, GC content, deletion and 
recombination rates in the studied genomic region, etc. Our observations 
corroborate the hypothesis that insertions of genomic material and eliminations 
of repeats are at the basis of power-laws in inter-repeat distances. The 
existence of these power-laws could facilitate the formation of the recently 
proposed "fractal globule" for the confined chromatin organization.