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Although filamentary structure is often present in the galaxy distribution, it is not clear whether gravitational clustering alone can produce it, or whether special initial conditions and non-gravitational physics are required. A visual examination of galaxy distributions, in both observations and numerical simulations, indicates that filaments tend to surround underdense regions. This tendency can be quantified using a filament finding algorithm such as the Minimal Spanning tree (MST). A heuristic approach connecting the size of a filament and its neighboring underdense region can be used to predict the distribution of filaments which result from gravitational clustering alone. For this purpose we use the gravitational quasi-equilibrium distribution theory to calculate probabilities for finding underdense regions. Numerical experiments confirm these calculations, and will be related to observations. SPB would like to acknowledge an SGER grant AST-9211435 from NSF; and VITA for its support and hospitality.
