About Patrick

About Me (Patrick Kelley)

As a trained scientist with a Ph.D. in Animal Behavior, I am interested in any sort of complex animal behavior. The more difficult and complex an organism or a group of organisms are, the more interested I become. My interests and work have spanned multiple fields within behavioral ecology, including bioacoustics, plant-animal interactions, endocrinology, visual perception, telemetry, climatic modeling, movement ecology, and ecological simulations. I have conducted fieldwork across the U.S. and in Central and South America, including Panama, Brazil, and Ecuador. My main work has focused on the tropical forests of Panama, where I have studied the ecology of tropical birds since 2000, using advanced statistical methods to better understand information flow and ecological interactions.

Education and Appointments (click to expand)

Education:

• University of California-Davis (Ph.D. Animal Behavior; advisor: John C. Wingfield)
• Harvard (B.A. Biology)

Postdoctoral Research Appointments:

• University of California, Berkeley
• Florida State University
• University of British Columbia

Appointments:

• [2018 - present] Research Scientist (Fixed Term; full faculty and PI status), Univ. of Wyoming
• [2025 - 2026] Faculty Fellow, School of Computing, Univ. of Wyoming
• [2023 - present] Adjunct Faculty, School of Computing, University of Wyoming
• [2022 - present] Research Associate, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute
• [2013 - present] Research Associate, Center for Tropical Studies (UCLA)

Personal miscellany (click to reveal too much information)

Dad twice over to two uncaged yahoos, an always-improving husband, fly-fisherman (freshwater and saltwater), fiercely anti-BS, ever-reverent Eagle Scout, college rower (6-seat or stroke, port-side), lover of simple and functional outdoor gear, data nerd, a pretty good shot with a 12-gauge and a .22 rifle (and, once upon a time, a .38), very amateur artist, collector of Silver/Bronze Age comic books, lover of colorful socks, tinkerer, son of a sin-eater Vietnam vet, Scotland-born, raised in coastal Georgia in a town smaller than Laramie. I’ve been sucker-punched by a Harpy Eagle; I’ve been an accommodating host to several tropical parasites, including one that ate a hole in my arm; Dengue and a couple of unknown diseases almost killed me; I’ve had my nose broken by a large branch that fell from the rainforest canopy (poor aim, some say); and I’m the only person I’ve ever known to have fallen into a human sewage cistern, which had been stewing for weeks in the tropical heat.

Traditional academic bean-counting (click to expand)

• Google Scholar Profile
• Research Gate

Teaching

I currently teach three courses per year at University of Wyoming (two during Fall term and one in January term):

• Behavioral Ecology (ZOO-4415) or Introductory Biology (LIFE-1010) [alternating Fall terms]
• Quantitative Analysis of Messy Data (ZOO-5500) [once per year]
• Data Science Deep Dive or Calling BS in Our Data-driven World (Honors) [alternative January terms]

Past courses include:

• Panama Field Course (WyoPanama): an ecology-based research course in January (led three times). Link to WyoPanama 1.0 and 2.0 and WyoPanama 3.0. Link to Facebook.
• Population Ecology (ZOO4400)

Other information: I am trained in Universal Design in Learning (UDL) best practices and am a strong proponent of Specifications Based Grading (links: 1, 2, 3) .