Australia?? These ones: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/373655-Carphurini. Not only there are for sure many unknown species, but also the known ones are in fact in a chaotic state. But, outside of butterflies, this is more the rule than the exception, so yes, any other insects or Arthropods that you choose will probably do.
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It depends on the person, scientific passion, specific interests; but the best are large groups with considerable taxonomic instability, for example microorganisms, insects âŚ
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It is relatively easy to find new species of tardigrades, especially from regions like Australia, New Zealand, South and North America (little harder), high altitude places etc. What is also very convinient, is that when you find such extraordinary specimen (confirmed by some tardigradologist via for instance iNaturalist), it is easy to send the samples with new to science creatures to researchers :)
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As an intern in Everglades National Park a few decades ago I collected specimens of some undescribed chironomid midges. I was working with an expert in their taxonomy, and he said he had dozens of species waiting to be described if only he had the time. My point being that the rate-limiting step on new descriptions in many groups is the labor of the taxonomic experts, not the number of field discoveries.
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One aspect of this question that lots of folks seem to have overlooked is how extremely difficult it is to become expert enough to recognize a new species when you find it. Sure, within most invertebrate groups it is easy to stumble across and photograph an undescribed species. But until youâve spent a large part of your life becoming familiar with the minute morphological featuresâand how their variation is partitioned among individuals vs. among speciesâyouâll never realize that what you saw was undescribedâmuch less be able to describe it by writing up the manuscript for publication. To become familiar with those minute morphological features, one has to spend years accumulating the published literature of a taxonomic groupâmost behind paywalls or in obscure journals hidden away in the dark corners of a few libraries. And you have to collect hundreds of specimens from far flung places in order to quantify within vs. among species variation to make an educated determination of what constitutes recognition as a species. Just learning how to write up a formal species description is a feat in itself! Those are the real challenges that must be overcome.
I recently noticed what might be a new species of plant within a genus that has about 5 other species. âChance favors the prepared mindâ. I wouldnât have noticed it had I not spent the previous three years becoming familiar with the variation within each of those 5 species (here on iNat) in order to notice that a few specimens looked a bit different. Note: without the thousands of observations of these species posted here on iNat, the unusual specimens wouldnât have ever been noticed. But are they different enough? Thatâs my ongoing challenge as I donât want to describe a new species and then have someone point out that itâs just a hybrid or a few plants at the extreme end of variation within a species. This has happened a lot, with the list of synonyms of some species being quite long because taxonomists jumped the gun and didnât do their research.
Since youâre a PhD candidate, Iâm assuming that youâre not looking to find an undescribed species and then hand it over to a taxonomic expert (they donât have the time to be bothered)âbut then why would you not strive to be technologically equipped to do so since you could establish a lab of your own? On a more philosophical note, one also has to wonder if there arenât better things a biologist could be doing than describing yet another new species!
An interesting paper was recently published about species delimitation and descriptionâbe sure to check it out.
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If you end up in academia, you have the discretion as long as you can acquire the funding. Thankfully, no one is telling me what I can and canât research. Iâve got lots of side projects stemming from my own personal curiosity using funds cobbled together from various sourcesâjust not enough time to work on each one of them as much as Iâd like to. I think that may very well be the greatest limiting factor of allâmaking the time.
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For what itâs worth, I basically gave up on academia when I realized that no one was going to want to fund research I was interested in at a high enough rate to get tenure at a research-oriented institution, and that at a non-research-oriented institution I would only be able to do research on nights on weekendsâbut Iâd also be expected to work nights and weekends just to accomplish my âfull-timeâ responsibilities!
In other words, Iâd either get booted out or not even be able to do research off work hours.
In practice, I donât think an academic position where you can really do curiosity-based research exists any more, unless you have extraordinary stamina and donât mind working 80 hrs a week for your entire career.
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A general-purpose way to answer this question would be to define your geographic area of interest and then systematically work through the major taxonomic groups youâre potentially interested in and figure out which have the lowest ratio of observations to species and the highest ratio of âneeds IDâ observations to total observations.
Also, if you want to make taxonomic discoveries, unless you happen to know a good taxonomist of a group youâre interested who has plenty of free time and doesnât mind working for free, you should also expect to develop the expertise needed to get them published. :-) This is not at all impossible, but requires dedication.
I also donât think it is true that taxonomic work is âincreasingly inaccessible to amateur naturalistsâ. If by amateur we mean unpaid, almost all current, publishing taxonomists are amateurs. They may have academic jobs, sure, but thatâs like pointing out that an aspiring author works at a library. No one gets hired or paid to do taxonomy. They do it on the side and the institution allows it so long as it doesnât cause any trouble.
(Well, almost no one. There are always exceptions.)
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Iâm not going to go over the amateur / professional argument again, as I laid it out here:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/non-invasive-naturalism-thank-you/27717/24
Amateurs certainly play a major role in British arthropodl taxonomy.
in a very broad stroke sense? bugs and freshwater fish, probably
just look to the invert and fishkeeping hobbies to see tons of undescribed species being kept, bred, and observed by people
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I think most taxonomy can be done without much more in specialized equipment than a microscope and specimen storage. Certainly there are questions that canât be answered without genetic data, but there are also questions it is simply unfashionable to answer without genetic data. And many questions it is unfashionable to answer at all.
If you look at publications in the more well-known academic journals, youâll see a narrow slice of the research that could be done, and that narrow slice will be heavily biased towards research that is more difficult to do without grant funding, specialized equipment, and institutional support. Thatâs not because taxonomic research requires those things, but because the academic culture requires those things.
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This happened at our house once by accident! Spring school project where one of my kids cut down some dried goldenrod plants with one gall attached. They used the material to make a diorama of the lifecycle of the species. I thought as it was late spring, that the fly would be long gone and we werenât interrupting anything. Later in the week, I found the gall fly with its distinctive wings flying around the house. We captured it and let it go back in the field.
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âŚand a library of reference works, which takes years to assemble.
What taxa have undiscovered species? Many, many. If youâre near a coast, you might try skeleton shrimp or sea spiders (and many other creatures). True spiders everywhere need more work. Several years ago, a botanist estimated that 5% of North American plants north of Mexico are undescribed, and I donât think the percentage has gone down much. Itâs higher outside of Europe and North America. I personally know of at least one undescribed Carex sedge, a grass (sorry, weâre working on it), and dozen possible undescribed Lomatium (plants in the carrot family; some may be hybrids or just oddballs). People are working on the Lomatiums, too, but thereâs more to do.
Basically, any diverse group, especially those with small parts, especially if itâs considered âdifficult,â might harbor undescribed species. However, avoid groups with many cultivated species, like cactus or orchids, where amateurs have made a real mess of the taxonomy â unless youâre ready to devote a lifetime to them.
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Do you need to use genetics to make taxonomic discoveries? No, in many, many groups you donât. Looking carefully is enough. (Youâre looking for consistent differences between groups, the kind of difference youâd see if each group were breeding among themselves and not with the other group.) For many species, a microscope is helpful, but adequate ones can be had for a reasonable cost.
The question reminds me of when my major professor got a small grant to use genetics to see if a particular grass species might actually be two. One of my first steps was to pull the folder for that species from the herbarium. It clearly held to two species. I assumed one was misidentified, a common thing in grasses, but no, they both keyed to the species we were supposed to study. I pointed this out and said weâd finished the study right there. No, the prof said, weâd contracted to do the genetic work so we had to do it even though we already knew the answer. Grumble, groan, lab work, groan, analysis, groan and â surprise! â the genetics showed that the two obviously different morphological groups were different. We got to name one.
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At least in vertebrates, a lot of modern-day papers that propose new species or new taxonomic arrangements that are based on morphology or morphometrics and NOT genetic methods are viewed somewhat skeptically. Until the phylogenetic work is done, the taxonomy might not be accepted.
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Many taxa are differentiated by such subtle morphological traits that genetic work really helps. And some people think DNA is the magic elixir that must be used; that without it, we have no answer. However, if the morphology is clear, DNA is extra. Nice, but not necessary.
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A botanists friend just posted a photo of an undescribed Draba and wrote, âNorth American arctic botany still needs a lot of work.â
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I may have said this on another post, but I saw this trend back in the mid 1980âs. I was working at an Agriculture Canada research station (Integrated Pest Management). I could see that as people retired, their places were not filled by full time scientists, but by post-docâs who worked for a few years and then had to search for new grant money. I had thought about going on to do Post-Grad work, but with a young family, I did not see the investment would match sustainable work. Many years later I found iNat, and am doing what I like to do now. After many detours along the way!
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