Table 1. The detailed information of the fractal p (Su, 2016) for eight datasets (named “fish”, “diatom”, “nabc”, “mcdb”, “gentry”, “fia”, “cbc” and “bbs”) from two sources (Baldridge et al., 2016a; Baldridge et al., 2016b; Passy, 2016a; Passy, 2016b).

The average and median value of p for the entire dataset are 1.108 ± 0.003 and 1.034, respectively. Although the range of the fractal p is over one order of magnitude (from 0.235 to 5.825), the average and median value of p for eight groups are consistent, noting that they are close to 1.

Fractal p	Maximum	Minimum	Median	Average	Sample numbers
diatom	5.825	0.335	1.272	1.343 ± 0.008	3,224
fish	4.563	0.756	1.592	1.702 ± 0.019	761
bbs	2.375	0.548	0.938	0.984 ± 0.004	2,769
cbc	3.738	0.733	1.492	1.556 ± 0.008	1,999
fia	2.229	0.235	0.907	0.931 ± 0.003	10,355
gentry	1.851	0.352	0.827	0.872 ± 0.019	222
mcdb	3.265	0.495	1.547	1.587 ± 0.052	103
nabc	3.112	0.540	1.240	1.278 ± 0.017	400
Total	5.825	0.235	1.034	1.108 ± 0.003	19,833