We confront lattice QCD results on the transition from the hadronic phase to the quark–gluon plasma with hadron resonance gas and percolation models. We argue that for T ≤ Tc the equation of state derived from Monte–Carlo simulations of (2+1) quark–flavor QCD can be well described by a hadron resonance gas. We examine the quark mass dependence of the hadron spectrum on the lattice and discuss i...
