I want to respond to this in particular because it’s the line of reasoning to which I’m reacting.
The question is “infrequently encountered” by whom? And who is judging the " likelihood of stumbling upon it in nature"?
There’s a practical bias at play here. Those who are best positioned to make that sort of judgement often lack the capability and resources to do so.
Here are a couple of examples from personal experience to illustrate what I mean:
Euchrysops kabrosae was known in D.R.Congo from just a single individual. A few years back I “found” a healthy colony of the species on a hilltop just outside Nyankunde, Ituri. It was one of the most common species on that hilltop and I found them there on 3 occasions in successive years. Now, that hilltop features a family’s vegetable garden. They are living side-by-side a “rare” butterfly but likely have no clue.
Syrmoptera mixtura was described based on 2 female specimens collected in 1895. Almost 125 years passed until it was “seen” again, and I was able to describe the male for the first time. While in the region for unrelated work for about a week and a half, I was able to spend some 15 or so hours collecting. In that time I came across 2 colonies of the species some 40km apart, both along paths heavily frequented by the local population. This is a species which would truly have been considered to be rare, some even doubted it’s validity as a species, but with little effort (I wasn’t even looking for it) and little time, there it is! Likely not rare. Just unrecorded by people with the knowledge & means to record it.
Yes, “rarity” is dependent on several factors but it is always relative to the personal experience of the observer or group of observers, but there is a general consensus as to which species would be considered “rare” (see the part about published evidence in my previous reply), which is usually based on the combined experience and judgements of people who have had significant field experience, and that is what our paper is addressing. If you’re fortunate enough to encounter with some frequency a species that is generally considered “rare” in academic circles, then good for you
Going in-depth about the “meaning” of rarity and how it can be interpreted or how it could be perceived differently by different people with different sampling/observational methods is beyond the scope of our paper and was never intended to be a part of the paper’s focus, as the title would plainly suggest. Such discussions would be more appropriate if we’re talking about reassessing the conservation status of a species
A tremendous number of insect species, probably the vast majority, have never been photographed alive, and probably a majority have never been photographed even as specimens. In my recent monograph on wasps I used photo image stacks, and this is increasingly common, but the technology for this only became readily available in the past 20 years or so, so most things before then were illustrated with drawings. And only a relative handful of species are photographed in life (though this too has increased dramatically in the past 20 years).
Having spent considerable time in the Dominican Republic, I could say a few “Dominican” things about Haitians in that same vein; but I won’t, since no good can come of airing them here.
Instead, I think it is important to consider the time it takes for a culture to develop a conservation ethic, and the factors necessary for developing it. I think all of us, if we could trace our roots back far enough, would eventually come to those ancestors who viewed animals as something to hunt for food and skins, and not much more. To the extent that our respective cultures have evolved different views, it is in part because they experienced certain conditions over time.
I wasn’t aware of a “project” like that either. I’ve added TMTC species to iNat, several of which I know I was the first to actually photograph and document the species since modern photography was invented. Insects, micros in particular, are still being discovered, or in many of my cases, “rediscovered” since no one knew what they looked like and only had ancient descriptions and hand drawings to go by. Micromoths are a good example.
In Australia there is a massive gap of knowledge on native fungi, it is estimated that we’ve only described about 5% of mushroom forming fungi. Since this kingdom has had so much neglect in Australia and other countries globally this would surely be a good area to look into for unphotographed specimens and new species. Citizen scientists and mycologists are trying hard to fill the gap but there’s a huge quantity of work yet to be done before a better understanding of fungi in Australia is reached.