  We study the spectrum of the staggered Dirac operator in SU(2) gauge fields
close to the free limit, for both the fundamental and the adjoint
representation. Numerically we find a characteristic cluster structure with
spacings of adjacent levels separating into three scales. We derive an
analytical formula which explains the emergence of these different spectral
scales. The behavior on the two coarser scales is determined by the lattice
geometry and the Polyakov loops, respectively. Furthermore, we analyze the
spectral statistics on all three scales, comparing to predictions from random
matrix theory.
