Why does it sometimes take so long to describe a species?

Nature Talk
2

My impression is that for obscure taxa, there aren’t very many researchers working on them which means there’s limited work-time for making any research progress with the group, so researchers need to prioritize what to focus on. The relevant researcher(s) are probably more interested in other areas of research (broader taxonomy, ecology, etc.) so describing species gets lower priority. You could probably apply this to any question of why research isn’t being done on something haha - limited time, researchers, and funding…