My colleagues and I describe plant species, so I have some feeling for why it can take so long. First, or perhaps our best excuse, is that knowing it’s an undescribed species isn’t enough. We have to gather information to convince other people. So we need to revisit the collection site and visit nearby sites to see how widespread or limited the species is and what habitats it grows in. We usually aren’t sure it’s a new species until we review our specimens in winter, so we’ll have to do the revisiting next year. We may not get all the life stages we want, so must revisit at the best time of year for what we need – another next year, in many cases.
Is our new species really different, or just an example of variation within an existing species? Have people found it before and not realized it? Or found it and given it a name we don’t know about? To answer those questions we need to read the relevant literature and examine specimens in herbaria for comparison. This requires loans from herbaria or visits to them, and both take time.
For detailed comparisons and descriptions, and especially for statistical analysis, we need lots of data. On my current project, getting all the data I want from one grass specimen takes about an hour. The good news, I guess, is that we have only about 15 specimens and some don’t have the parts we’d need to get certain measurements.
DNA information isn’t required but it’s often used in figuring out new species. Getting DNA sequences takes time and money and once you have it, what do you have? Analyzing the results takes time. Some of the undescribed species I know about are now included in a major review of the DNA of many species in the Apiaceae (carrot family) and that’s going to take time to complete.
(Insert lots of dithering and uncertainty at each stage.)
Most of these projects involve multiple people. Communication takes time. Also, there’s always someone (too often me) who for some reason drops the project for a while, delaying the whole thing.
Money – travel takes money, DNA analysis takes money, potting soil for growing plants takes money. Alpha taxonomy (species-level taxonomy) is cheap compared to most science, but we have to look for a bit of money. That takes time, including lots of procrastination time because writing grant requests is so unpleasant.
Writing takes time. Having the article edited and rewriting it takes time. Formatting the document to fit journal requirements takes time. Peer review takes time – hopefully just a couple months but sometimes a year. Rewriting takes time, some spent swearing at the stupid ideas the peer reviewers had. Final publication takes time.
Life happens. We have classes to teach, identification requests to fulfill, taxes to prepare, weddings or funerals to attend, other trips we want to take, other projects that need attention as much as our new species does. Holidays happen. We get sick. Friends get sick. For some of us, lots and lots of procrastination on iNaturalist happens.
And then there is the fact that a new species we all know about is considered the “property” of the person/people who plan to name it. Sometimes they sit on it for years. Sigh.
The grass we are working on may, if all goes well, reach publication two years after it was originally discovered. That’s fast! There’s a sedge we should name that I worked on hard for a couple years but now keep forgetting, so it’s been waiting for 20 years.