My new life goal is to name a previously unknown species. I understand a background in taxonomy might be required to do so. Does anyone know if this is true? Would I need a biology degree? I’m willing to pursue a certain amount of coursework. Who gets to decide what a species is named?
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a certain amount of coursework?
what makes you so sure it’s an unnamed species?
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In theory anyone can describe a new species as long as they follow the formal process in doing so (publishing a description in peer-reviewed literature, clarifying why it’s distinct from other species, matching it with a specimen in a museum, etc.). But it’s much easier to do all those things if you have some academic experience and credentials.
There are plenty of undescribed species out there, especially in the tropics. But doing the background research to verify that it’s a new species is still a lot of work. You may find this thread helpful for understanding the prerequisites and logistics involved in describing new species: Why does it sometimes take so long to describe a species?
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The etiquette of describing new species is entirely dependent on the field, so it’s hard to generalize. Many amateurs describe invertebrate species based on pretty subjective morphological differences. But if you think you have a new species of bird you’ll need genomic DNA and a very strong case. But there aren’t really courses that I know of. The best training is to familiarize yourself with the current systematic state of the genus/group through the literature and ideally visiting museum collections. Whoever names the species can name it whatever they like so long as it follows the relevant nomenclatural codes.
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Suggesting a name is easy.
Various organisms sometimes offer the public a chance at picking a new name, e.g. Name a New Species | Scripps Institution of Oceanography
Coming up with a proper name is not very difficult either, there are relatively few rules (in the various International Codes, for Zoology etc.).
Finding an as-of-yet undescribed creature, prove that it is worthy of a new name, then describe it correctly… is where the difficulty begins.
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Just to clarify here: although the large majority of newly published names will be peer-reviewed simply by virtue of the papers having been submitted to mainstream journals, peer-review is actually not a requirement at all for the description of new taxa (I personally find it absurd that the the codes have not been updated to require it). A good summary by Braby et al. 2024:
Taxonomy is perhaps the only field of science in which there is no requirement for its scientific products to be published through the critical peer-review process (Wüster et al. 2021). Although there have been proposals to change the rules of the Code so that new species can be described only through a formal accreditation process, such as in peer-reviewed journals (Borrell 2007, Yeates 2009, Kaiser 2013, Kaiser et al. 2013, Denzer and Kaiser 2023, Wüster and Kaiser 2023), these recommendations have yet to be endorsed and implemented by the ICZN. Thus, taxonomic works may be published privately in self-published works, which potentially opens the door to poor-quality work or even non-scientific work.
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If I remember correctly, though, in botany, one of the rules for making a new name is “effective publication”. It doesn’t have to be peer-reviewed, but it has to be widely available such that botanists can find it and have easy access. I think even things like dissertations that never get dispersed past their school libraries don’t count as “effective”.
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If the “mush” in your name refers to mushrooms, I can describe the typical modern standard for new species in mycology. The ideal is to have multiple different collections of your new species from different locations. This helps to get an idea of its range and the variation in its habitat and appearance, as well as its genetic variation. For new species these days, I think sequencing is all but mandatory. The ideal is multi-locus sequencing, typically for a standard set of barcodes (often ITS, TEF1, RPB1, and RPB2). This sounds hard/complicated, but it’s really not that bad. There are various groups that do this as part of larger funded efforts or for a fee, and they may even help you interpret the results. The purpose of this is to show that your collections form a monophyletic group (a single species) that is distinct from other known species, and to show how it is related to those other species in a tree (this is called phylogeny). I can help direct you to some resources for this if you’d like.
Typically, some amount of microscopy is also done, noting the size and shape of the spores and a few other features. You’d write up a description of the morphology (what are the physical characteristics of your fungus at a microscopic and macroscopic level, and how do they compare to similar species?), the ecology (what is its habitat like? Is it associated with certain types of plants/other species? How would someone know where and when they might be able to find this in the wild, aside from just going to your specific locations?). This requires some familiarity with the standard terminology that is used to describe all of these features.
Your next step is to be able to demonstrate that someone else hasn’t already described the same thing under a different name. Is it possible that someone published a description of the same thing you found 150 years ago, possibly in another country/continent and in another language? If yours is in a genus that has already been extensively studied in recent years, there may be a good review that covers a lot of this background for you, systematically searching through old names and describing their status. If it’s a genus where most other species have been sequenced already, that will make things much easier for you as well. If it’s a “messy” genus with many old species descriptions that haven’t been updated/modernized, this can be extremely challenging.
The best way to figure all of these things out is to read the publications that describe the other known species in your genus (you’ll need to do this anyways in order to figure out how yours compares to them). From these, you can get a feel for the requirements, the format, the standards, and the terminology. I don’t think you actually need a degree to be able to do this, although it would probably make learning much faster and easier. If you have no background in biology or life sciences/naturalism/taxonomy at all and this is all new to you, your best bet would be to reach out to someone who does have that background and experience and has publications of similar species. If you really do have a new species, they might be willing to help put a paper together, or even do most of the science and let you be a coauthor. Just don’t expect to have the species named after you, as that’s generally frowned upon. Otherwise, I would think of this as a long-term goal and focus on gradually building up the knowledge, experience, and skills you need in the mean time. I don’t think it’s an unrealistic goal at all if it’s something that interests you, so don’t be discouraged if this stuff initially sounds complicated, but don’t expect it to be quick and easy either.
Here is an example of a very large paper that defined several different species and sorted through a bunch of old names:
https://doi.org/10.3852/14-166
Here is an example of a paper that defined a single new species (in the same genus):
https://doi.org/10.1080/00275514.2024.2397932
You can see that they cite many other papers describing other species in the same genus, showing that it’s also necessary to read through the work that came before you. This will be easier if you are a student with access to pay-walled papers, but there are also “other ways” to get access to papers behind paywalls (google it; it rhymes with “high sub”…)
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In many places, if you live within travel distance of a university library, it is often possible to visit in-person and use the library and its databases even if you are not associated with the university.
Or if you go the route of collaborating with a working scientist to co-author a species description, there is often a certain amount of informal sharing of literature among colleagues if you run into a paywalled article that you need help accessing.
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Unless you’re interested in springtails - dozens of very common undescribed species are found throughout most of the world (even much of Europe, a very well-studied place, has some undescribed ones). The real difficulties for these are locating the very obscure (sometimes almost century-old) literature. Some folks are working on describing species, but as of now we are just basically finding more and more. Take a look through some of these (which is missing a bunch): https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=1&project_id=245058&verifiable=any
Anyways, to the main
Unless you’re interested in springtails - dozens of very common undescribed species are found throughout most of the world (even much of Europe, a very well-studied place, has some undescribed ones). The real difficulties for these are locating the very obscure (sometimes almost century-old) literature. Some folks are working on describing species, but as of now we are just basically finding more and more. Take a look through some of these (which is missing a bunch): https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=1&project_id=245058&verifiable=any
Anyways, anyone can describe a species, but this is of course very difficult. It would require detailed examination, and often collecting several specimens. As well as comparing with all known species in the genus (which of course requires one to gain access to literature), and then following very precise guidelines on writing a species description. Some resources you might find useful:
https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/article/202/4/zlae043/7664331
https://www.iczn.org/the-code/the-international-code-of-zoological-nomenclature/
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I had it typed and it was assigned a provisional name.
It’s true that a new species description does not have to be in a peer-reviewed journal or similar publication (such as a book) but it does have to be in a publication that is printed (or printable, such as a PDF) and available in multiple libraries. I’ve seen new species described in very niche journals that had no formal peer review process. But you can’t publish on a website or in your own created journal that is not distributed and recognized as a journal by fellow researchers.
I’d say if you have what you think is really an undescribed species, you should contact researchers who are actually doing work on that group of organisms and collaborate with them to assess your finding and potentially publish on it.
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I am happy to study but not to the extent of getting another postgraduate degree in a field unrelated to my first.
That’s very cool! But it’s worth being aware that there are a very large number of provisional names out there. They are often undescribed/new species, but sometimes not. They are often a way to keep track of genetic variants. Some of those variants might end up matching existing species that don’t have good published sequences yet. Some of them might just be variation within a species. Other times a single well-known species ends up having several different genetic groups, but no decision has been reached on whether the groups should be recognized as different species.
There are some very well-known taxa with provisional names. For example, one of the most easily recognizable species on the planet is Amanita muscaria, the big red mushroom with white spots. Sequencing has shown that there are multiple distinct clades, and it’s likely they these will eventually be recognized as different species. If you collect Amanita muscaria in the Pacific Northwest, have it sequenced, and post it on iNaturalist, it will get a provisional name, since the “real” Amanita muscaria is in Europe. Most people who live in the region have seen one of these provisionally-named muscaria clades whether they realize it or not. The same thing is true with many species of fungi in America.
I have the same long-term goal as you (participate in the description of a new species), and I can share some of what I have learned. I don’t think you need another degree for this, but it will require patience and commitment. A huge fraction of new species are described by amateur experts without formal training. Here are a couple of examples for inspiration (some of whom I have interacted with over iNaturalist):
https://e360.yale.edu/features/field-sleuths-the-amateur-naturalists-who-are-discovering-new-species
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Rockefeller
If this is something that interests you, I’d recommend learning your basics before contacting an expert. Read more about the genus and the other species in it. You should look in real publications, and not just in guidebooks and secondary sources. They might be a bit confusing at first, but you can figure it out with time. My education has nothing to do with mushrooms, and I think I now know have most of the knowledge I would need to describe a new species. I do have a background in molecular biology, which helped with the DNA sequence stuff, but I think this part can be self-taught as well if you don’t let complicated-sounding words scare you.
Go on google scholar and type the name of the genus in, perhaps along with “phylogeny” or “taxonomy”, and see what papers come up. Depending on how well-studied the genus is, you might be able to find a recent comprehensive review. Or you can find some of the papers in which other new species in the genus were described. The goal here is to learn enough that you can better understand how your find fits in with what is already known. Has the genus received much attention? Do most known species have sequences associated with them and a good phylogenetic tree showing how they are all related? If that hasn’t happened yet, I think it becomes a much bigger and more complicated task that requires a larger effort by a group. Also, learn what a type specimen is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_(biology)
If the genus is well-described, where does your collection fit in it? Is it part of a species that everyone already knows will be split, or is this more unexpected? Besides the sequence, is there anything else that distinguishes what you found from the most similar/closely related species that are already known? Would you be able to tell it apart without sequencing, and do you think you can go find more of it from other spots? Learning enough to answer these questions will make the next steps much more clear, it will make an expert more likely to take you seriously if/when you do reach out, and it will allow you to more meaningfully participate and contribute, or at least to understand what is going on.
Another good trick is to look for other sequenced observations on iNaturalist. You can use this link:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?taxon_id=56830&field:DNA%20Barcode%20ITS=
It shows all observations of morels (genus Morchella) with ITS sequences that have been shared in an observation field. In the search box at the top, replace “Morchella” with the genus that contains your species. This will help you to get more context for what you found. Are there a lot of sequenced examples of the common/well-known species without provisional names? Are there many other observations with provisional names? Any with the same provisional name as yours? This is actually the extremely cool and fun part, and it’s my absolute favorite part of iNaturalist by a long shot; nothing else even comes close. You can look at groups of observations with similar sequences before they have even been formally named/described! You can try to find patterns yourself (geographic, ecological, seasonal, or morphological) before the experts have actually published them.
A larger number of examples actually makes it easier to determine how your find fits in (this will help you understand why it’s important to have more than one collection before a new species is named/described). Unfortunately, it’s often the case that there are no consistent differences that are easily visible to the naked eye. Sometimes the differences are only microscopic. Other times they are based on differences in location or habitat. And sometimes there really is no difference aside from the sequence. At the very least, it might help you learn about the range, and possibly help you to obtain other collections. You could go to the sites of other sequenced observations and collect samples from each.
You’ll also want to learn the basics of how to work with DNA sequences. I swear it’s not as complicated as you might think. It’s just a string of letters, and you can compare multiple strings of letters, lining them up side-by-side to see how many differences there are between them. When you have a bunch of different strings of letters, you can start trying to line them up in groups based on their similarity, then figure out how similar the groups are to each other. That’s a simplified description, but it covers the general concept. There are free online programs that run through a browser and line up sequences for you, and the can even build trees showing the relationships between larger groups of sequences/species. This is phylogeny.
People typically only sequence a very short region of DNA. The full length of DNA in your mushroom may be tens of millions of letters (basepairs), but most of the time, people will sequence a region of 500-1000 letters. Which region of an organism’s DNA you sequence is called the locus (plural for locus is loci, as in “you should sequence multiple loci”). The most common/popular locus to sequence is called ITS, and my guess is that’s what you have (the ITS sequence). Everyone agrees to sequence the same region that way all of the sequences can be lined up and compared to each other so we can find groups of similar sequences. A particularly important next step to determine whether you have a new species is to sequence other regions to see if they are also different from known species. They should help to refine your understanding of how your organism is related to others. Those other loci I mentioned (RPB2, TEF1, RPB1) are other popular regions that are used for this. The more of these steps you do on your own, the higher the odds are that an expert will want to help you finish it up, as they can see you are motivated to try to help ant not just dead weight.
Finally, if you want a good review that discusses a lot of the issues in taxonomy and the process of describing new species of mushrooms, here is my favorite one on morel taxonomy. I had absolutely no background in taxonomy itself, and found it very helpful. I think most of what they discuss is applicable to many other groups of fungi:
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11557-021-01755-z
Anyways, this was 10 times more than I planned to write and kind of went off the rails, so I’ll abruptly end it here for now, hopefully some of it was helpful!
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I think the issue is not so much the quality of these private taxonomic works (I think, names defined in privately published works with subpar methods just won’t go anywhere), but rather finding them.
If I were to privately travel to some place where the fauna isn’t well known, collect a bunch of specimens, and then suggest and name new species, how would anyone ever learn of these? Going through old scientific literature to research whether anyone has already given a name to that species I thought I discovered is hard enough. If the only record is a pdf document on some old, abandoned private blog, then how would I ever know whether it existed? Unless the author has sent the type specimen and his work to some institution (in which case it would automatically get some sort of a review)…
Overall, as long as the default of scientific publishing remains barred and controlled by publishers, I’m quite open to have more alternative ways of presenting scientific findings that would also make it easier for non-academics without ties to any institute to partake. We need some way to review these works of course, but it’s not like peer reviewers are paid anyway. So if they did it voluntarily or semi-forced by a journal doesn’t seem to make much of a difference to me.
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this isn’t what’s being referred to in that excerpt (that example would not be a validly published name), but rather examples such as Hoser, where someone creates their own ‘official’ journal that is easily accessible, and then publishes actual papers in that: but without having them reviewed by anyone
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There are two different things that are sort of being commingled here.
- How do you name a species in a way that’s valid/available according to the relevant Code of nomenclature? This doesn’t necessarily require peer review, advanced degrees, etc., just knowledge of what constitutes “publication” under the relevant Code and the deposit of a suitable type specimen in an appropriate repository.
However, the more relevant question is probably
- How do I name a species so that people actually use that name afterwards, instead of ignoring my name and treating it as a synonym? @mycographer’s responses speak best to this. You may also want to look at the recent profile of Charley Eiseman and his experiences with leaf miners. He initially worked in collaboration with some specialists to describe the new taxa he was discovering, and recently was able to describe a new species solo.
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Not to mention research funding!
If you’re looking to find new species, there are lots of opportunities in museum work or with a University collection cataloging the backlog of collected samples. It may not be the amazing discovery in the wild that people picture in their heads, but the legwork is already done. You would almost definitely would need a degree in biology (or be enrolled in a biology program at a University) to be able to do the work, though. And there something of a needle in a haystack aspect to it, too.
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If there’s a specific article you want (and the authors are still alive), very often they will provide a copy if you ask nicely using the contact info listed with the paper. Check ArXiv.org, too. Many researchers post a free copy of manuscripts there as well (at least that’s common in my field).
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