St. Olaf researcher receives Charles H. Turner Award
Yeng Xiong ’24 received the Charles H. Turner Award from the Animal Behavior Society (ABS) and presented his research with the St. Olaf Lee Lab at the 2024 Annual ABS Meeting in London, Ontario.
Since 2002, the ABS has awarded the Charles H. Turner Award for undergraduate researchers to participate at the annual society meetings. Selected Turner awardees receive financial support to travel to the annual meeting and participate in a one-day workshop structured to integrate students into the society and wider animal behavior research community. The award is named after Charles Turner, one of the first African American researchers in animal behavior.
Xiong spent three years as a member of a research team led by St. Olaf Associate Professor of Biology and Director of Neuroscience Norman Lee. In the specific project that Xiong and his fellow researchers worked on, they looked into the behavior of an acoustic parasitoid fly, Ormia ochracea, in relation to the song of its host, the field cricket (see a previous St. Olaf Magazine story featuring this research).
At the conference, Xiong presented the team’s work examining Ormia ochracea larval development and resource competition.
“A lot of time, care, and maintenance was put into this project during data collection from the folks in the Lee Lab, so I am grateful to have the opportunity to present the work on their behalf,” Xiong says.
Xiong was also involved with other aspects of campus life. He spent a semester as a member of Assistant Professor of Biology Takashi Maie’s Functional Morphology and Biomechanics Lab, participated in the Neuroscience Club, and studied abroad with an Equatorial Biology J-Term class in Ecuador with Associate Professor of Practice in Biology Sara Fruehling. Xiong attended Cultural Club meetings with student organizations such as Hmong Ole Student Association (HOSA), Asian Student Union (ASU), Chinese Students and Cultural Association (CSCA), and International Student Organization (ISO). Xiong also participated in performances conducted by D-VINE (a K-Pop and Asian-inspired dance/vocal group) and KRUSH (a K-Pop dance group).
Attending the ABS conference was a fruitful experience for Xiong, who got to learn from and connect with other scholars. There were presentations in numerous fields of animal behavior: ecological effects, sexual selection, predation, and foraging, to name a few.
“Every day I learned something new that helped me determine where in the animal behavior field I would like to go,” says Xiong. “I went into this meeting with a wide field of interests, and going to presentations helped me narrow these fields,” he adds, noting that he is now looking forward to exploring research in animal communication further.
Xiong’s research with Lee also allowed him to connect with one of Lee’s colleagues, University of Florida Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Yusan Yang. “Her research was on poison dart frog biases based on parental colors. I was drawn to her research mainly because of my personal interests,” says Xiong. “I’ve always thought it would be fun to work with frogs, and going out into the field to collect them was also a fun concept for me.”
“What I enjoyed most at the presentation was being able to network with many professionals in my field of interest,” says Xiong. “But more importantly, connecting with researchers near my age and being able to see how we could grow in our careers was inspiring.”
About Charles Turner
Charles H. Turner was the first African American to receive a graduate degree from the University of Cincinnati and likely the first to receive a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1907. Prior to obtaining his Ph.D., he published more than 30 research articles, and was the first African American to publish in Science, the prestigious journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Despite this productivity, Turner faced racism and was unable to maintain a faculty position at a research institution. He was eventually appointed as a high school teacher at Sumner High School in St. Louis. Even in this position, which lacked the laboratory facilities and other resources he would have had access to at a research institution, Turner continued to make groundbreaking discoveries that went against prevailing ideas of the time. His work demonstrated that animals were capable of complex cognition and not just trial-by-error learning. He showed that bees were able to use visual and olfactory cues to find and learn of nectar sources. He was also the first to discover the ability of some insects to discriminate between sound frequencies (pitch).
By naming an award after him, the Animal Behavior Society Diversity Committee emphasizes its goal to increase the diversity of its membership by encouraging researchers of all ages, levels, and ethnic groups to participate in its annual meetings.