J. Patrick KelleyUniversity of Wyoming | UW · Department of Zoology and Physiology
J. Patrick Kelley
Ph.D. University of California-Davis, Animal Behavior
About
19
Publications
115,904
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519
Citations
Introduction
My lab, the Behavioral Complexity Lab, integrates field experiments, quantitative analysis, machine learning, and information theory to decipher complexities of animal behavior in natural systems. My work is based in the tropics and seeks to find novel ways to detect and quantify complex behaviors in these complex ecosystems. Though my lab’s research is focused primarily on tropical birds in Panama and Hawaii, my lab contributes broadly to understanding in four areas: ecological interaction networks, behavioral complexity, ecological bioacoustics, and statistical ecology. Lab initiatives include the Hawaii VINE Project, the Panama PLUMAS Project, and the ecoAI Project; these projects are funded by the US Department of Defense, National Geographic, and Microsoft (AI).
Additional affiliations
August 2018 - present
August 2018 - present
Position
- Researcher
Description
- First-year seminar (Honors): Calling Bull$#!% in our science-driven world Introductory Biology (odd-year Fall terms) Introduction to Research Methods and Analysis (even-year Fall terms) Ecological Culture of Panama (January term)
August 2017 - December 2017
Education
September 2007 - September 2012
September 1997 - June 2001
Publications
Publications (19)
Significance
Species invasions and introductions are reshaping ecosystems around the world. In such novel ecological scenarios, it remains unclear whether crucial ecosystem functions played by lost native species may be partially or fully replaced by introduced species. We show that introduced plants and seed dispersers may take over interaction ne...
Increasing rates of human-caused species invasions and extinctions may reshape communities and modify the structure, dynamics, and stability of species interactions. To investigate how such changes affect communities, we performed multiscale analyses of seed dispersal networks on Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi. Networks consisted exclusively of novel interactions,...
Animals frequently make decisions based on social information obtained from other animals, which can influence interspecific interactions and affect individual fitness. For example, animals eavesdrop on other animals to find profitable food resources, yet the types of cues they use and how these cues influence decisions to approach a resource remai...
Temperature affects ectotherms in a variety of ways. These effects can be especially complex in sexual behaviors, as different sexes may be affected differently by temperature. We examined this in the jumping spider, Habronattus clypeatus. In this species, males court females using visual and vibratory signals. We tested whether key intersexual beh...
El Niño Southern Oscillation events (ENSO) and the subsequent opposite weather patterns in the following months and years (La Niña) have major climatic impacts, especially on oceanic habitats, affecting breeding success of both land and sea birds. We assessed corticosterone concentrations from blood samples during standardized protocols of capture,...
As human-caused extinctions and invasions accumulate across the planet, understanding the processes governing ecological functions mediated by species interactions, and anticipating the effect of species loss on such functions become increasingly urgent. In seed dispersal networks, the mechanisms that influence interaction frequencies may also infl...
In altered communities, novel species’ interactions may critically impact ecosystem functioning. One key ecosystem process, seed dispersal, often requires mutualistic interactions between frugivores and fruiting plants, and functional traits, such as seed width, may affect interaction outcomes. Forests of the Hawaiian Islands have experienced high...
Animals eavesdrop on other species to obtain information about their environments. Heterospecific eavesdropping can yield tangible fitness benefits by providing valuable information about food resources and predator presence. The ability to eavesdrop may therefore be under strong selection, although extensive research on alarm-calling in avian mixe...
Complex displays play an important role in female mate choice and male–male interactions for many species. Displays used in both inter- and intrasexual interactions offer an opportunity to examine how the ordering and structure of complex displays may vary with context. To understand how social context can influence the performance of complex displ...
Changes in sexual signals have the potential to promote rapid divergence and reproductive isolation among populations of animals. Thus, identifying processes contributing to variation in signals is key to understanding the drivers of speciation. However, it is difficult to identify the processes initiating changes in signals in empirical systems be...
Background/Question/Methods
Tropical mountains harbor some of the world’s most diverse ecological communities due to high species turnover generated by narrow elevational ranges of species. Our research investigates the importance of biotic factors in reinforcing elevational ranges of tropical birds, with the goal to understand how such high speci...
Understanding the interactions of an organism and its environment is essential for us to integrate ultimate and proximate
causation on a global scale. Organism–environment interaction includes all organisms including animals, plants, and non-eukaryotes,
etc. because all of them are responsive to environmental change including those that are human-i...
Severe environmental conditions affect organisms in two major ways. The environment may be predictably severe such as in deserts, polar and alpine regions, or individuals may be exposed to temporarily extreme conditions through weather, presence of predators, lack of food, social status etc. Existence in an extreme environment may be possible, but...
Interactions among parents, offspring and the environment are a critical aspect of parental care. Begging by offspring usually results in increased parental provisioning. Yet, parents also vary their behaviours to reduce offspring predation. Both begging sounds and provisioning activity can increase risk of nest predation. We predicted in a high ne...
Birds in the lowland tropical rain forest are expected to have low energy turnover. Here, we used heart rate telemetry to estimate nighttime resting metabolic rate (RMR), daily energy expenditure (DEE), and locomotor activity of a small, long-lived tropical rain forest-understory bird, the spotted antbird (Hylophylax naevioides). Heart rate was lin...
Predation is an important selective pressure in natural ecosystems. Among non-human primates, relatively little is known about how predators hunt primate prey and how primates acquire adaptive responses to counteract predation. In this study we took advantage of the recent reintroduction of radio-tagged harpy eagles (Harpia harpyja) to Barro Colora...
![Fig[ 0] Spectrograms and time series of whooping crane contact calls...](profile/J-Patrick-Kelley/publication/229696048/figure/fig1/AS:393874850762755@1470918490189/Fig-0-Spectrograms-and-time-series-of-whooping-crane-contact-calls-sampling-rate-1645_Q320.jpg)
![Fig[ 1] Two successive video stills of vigilant response in a whooping...](profile/J-Patrick-Kelley/publication/229696048/figure/fig2/AS:393874850762756@1470918490222/Fig-1-Two-successive-video-stills-of-vigilant-response-in-a-whooping-crane-In-frame-A_Q320.jpg)
![Fig[ 2] Chance of response by trial\ combining data from all...](profile/J-Patrick-Kelley/publication/229696048/figure/fig3/AS:669644792795137@1536667168240/Fig-2-Chance-of-response-by-trial-combining-data-from-all-experiments-Chance-of_Q320.jpg)
Although formants (vocal tract resonances) can often be observed in avian vocalizations, and several bird species have been shown to perceive formants in human speech sounds, no studies have examined formant perception in birds’ own species-specific calls. We used playbacks of computer-synthesized crane calls in a modified habituation—dishabituatio...
Questions
Questions (6)
I am looking for a solution with the R programming environment that will allow me to simulate animal movement (using a correlated random walk or other chosen model) within a polygon boundary, which acts as a reflective boundary to the movement.
I did find a solution (http://tinyurl.com/jbyuty8), but this has ArcGIS has a program dependency. I prefer to use open-source solutions.
The "adehabitatLT" package has a number of simulation functions, but I cannot find one that allows specification of a bounday argument.
Any helpful hints out there?
Hi all,
My brain is on the fritz today, so I thought I would ask the community this question. Given a SpatialPolygon object in R, I know how to easily create an outer buffer (a region that has a boundary that is X distance outside of the original polygon). I need to create a "inner buffer," a polygon (or group of polygons, if the original shape dictates that) with boundaries X distance away from the original polygon but on the inside of that polygon. A crude drawing is attached below. I know I'm missing something simple in one of the R functions (like in the gBuffer function or similar), but my mind is cramping up. Any hints or long-hand ways of solving this issue?
Best to all! I hope everyone is having a great year!
--Patrick
Projects
Project (1)
