Abstract
The abundant center hypothesis describes adequately the spatial variation in the abundance of plant species, but abundance patterns in animals are much more complex and are not well understood. In this talk, I will give an overview of 30 years of research aiming to determine what drives spatial variation in the abundance of animals. I will argue that landscape-scale factors are probably more important than large-scale abiotic drivers, and that habitat selection probably plays a key role. I will start by outlining how habitat selection is driven by the need to thermoregulate in reptiles, then I will outline how habitat selection improves performance and, ultimately, fitness. I will conclude with recent work on the effect of surrounding landscape composition on local abundance.