Abundance and spatial distribution of the structure supporting the nest of White Stork Ciconia ciconia in Guerbes-Sanhadja wetland eco-complex, northeastern of Algeria

In the present investigation, the spatial distribution of the nest of White Stork Ciconia ciconia was examined. Spearman's rank-order correlations test and the principal component analysis (PCA) were applied to a total of 227 nests recorded in the Guerbes-Sanhadja wetland eco-complex, northeastern of Algeria, over seven sites, for which the percentage of occupied nests reaches 89% (202 nest were occupied). Our goals are twofold: to explore the variation and distribution of the structure supporting the nest and to explain their spatial variability. The Spearman's rank-order correlation test show that steel electricity poles had non-significant correlations with tree, and only concrete electricity poles structure had statistically significant positive correlation with mobile phone antennas structure (R = 0.757; at p < .05), and the roofs of houses had statistically significant positive correlation with mobile phone antennas structure (R = 0.825; at p < .05). According to the PCA results, it was observed that the PC1, which explains 50.86% of the total inertia, further represents and synthesizes the dominant structure supporting the nest, i.e., tree, steel electricity poles, and concrete electricity poles, which were strongly correlated with PC1, having a component loading nearly equal to 0.766, 0.821, and - 0.929, respectively, while the PC2, which explains 30.30% of the total inertia, includes the structure rarely recorded in the studied region, i.e., wooden electricity poles and the roofs of houses.