I wonder why so many undescribed species are known, sometimes for years, and still nobody describes them? What stops the process? In many cases to find specimens is not a problem.

That’s unfortunate, imo it should be on of major prorities, can’t study ecology for something that is not known for science. With so many taxa in the project from different groups, I’d like to see them replaced with new finds.

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 …

Yes, and at the same time I know publishings the net year from the discovery. If maybe scientists did write on observations that something is prepairing, that’d be fine, but what I get for fungi I observe “oh, we all know about it, but it’s not described” not like anybody cares?

I suspect that often the person who writes that is not the person who “owns” it and will be writing the description – eventually.

Yeah, ditto to all of this. As a grad student I used to rag on some of the old taxonomists who had been sitting on undescribed new species for decades. But now I’m living the problem myself. Nobody does really care-- if they did they’d help make it a viable job. I have to teach and grade hundreds o…

Meanwhile from the common names thread, the other side with taxonomic vandals sweeping thru.

It’s probably more straightforward to research and write a paper that involves revision of existing taxa ( including resurrecting an existing name) than to describe something completely new. Although some of the revision papers do a very good job of reviewing the taxonomic history of the group and …

But we also see many researchers specifically visit countries and describe stuff from them, they’re ready to spend the money on that, but here we have already an established sign of a new species and where it can be found, search for your taxon of interest, find out if anybody really “owns” it, do t…

Message me which papers and I’ll try to get access from my local university

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

Nature Talk

tiwane November 23, 2022, 6:32pm 8

(split this off from the original topic)

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

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