Say you’re wandering through the jungles of Brazil or a forest in Vietnam and - hey, it’s a bug you’ve never seen before.
You take a live specimen or two back to the lab and before long, it is officially confirmed; this is indeed a hitherto-unknown species and you get it named after you.
Now, within the scientific community, would this make you a household name these days, or is it only good enough to be tucked away in one line on your resume and good for conversation the next time you have a beer with your science buddies?
Does it have to be a much larger animal, like a previously-undiscovered gazelle or antelope, to really get the scientist some notoriety?
Among taxonomists of various flavours I’ve known, identifying a new species is a good day at work and probably enough to give you a spring in your step and maybe the nice red wine from the bottle-shop on the way home, but that’s about all. Most find their new species by re-working existing museum collections and others’ work, and frequently are studying a group that was last looked in the early 1900s, and a host of new collections, materials and techniques allow them to lump and split like crazy.
Bug people would have it easy, big mammal specialists may feel like they are missing out but even recently DNA studies have speciated the giraffe. That would be worth a good shiraz and extra cake.
Exactly. My old mycology professor is what is sometimes referred to as an ‘alpha taxonomist’ - describing new species is basically what he does in terms of research. He’s described ~300 species of fungi. He’s a substantial figure in his field with the respect that commands in that tiny corner of academia. He’s also had some wider public exposure in a limited way, largely because he likes to involve himself in more general public education endeavors. But that’s built up over a career and really is only tangentially related to sheer numbers.
For some grad student of his who describes a new species or three (pretty common for one of his students), it’s just a line in a resume and a maybe a nice celebratory dinner when that thesis is finally finished/published. A new species of something is probably being described every day.
About 15,000 new species are discovered each year. There are presently about 1.2 million known species. There are about 8.7 million species on Earth. So it would take about 500 years working at the present rate to find all the species.
Real question: Is this somewhat arbitrary, given the species problem? Maybe Colibri can say more, but I heard that taxonomists are broadly divided into “lumpers and splitters”, as in they’re constantly arguing over whether two similar species should be lumped together as one species or split apart.
Example… a few years ago they decided they found a new species of bird of paradise, with a different dance and a blue frown instead of big ol’ grin. Prior to the observation of their new dance, and before DNA analysis, it was assumed they were the same species as the regular bird of paradise. There’s still another (sub?) species, the lesser superb, whose speciation is still unclear. If it’s found that all three of these are capable of interbreeding, would that change anything? And their relatives the riflebirds were only recently lumped together with them, apparently.
Is this a case of individuals bickering among themselves over a few % difference in a genetic continuum, arguing over where to draw the subjective boundaries?
Yes, I was co-author on naming a new species of forest robin, which was initially accepted but now is regarded as a subspecies (sigh).
Naming a new species of bird or large mammal is a big deal. Not so much for a small mammal, reptile, or amphibian. As far as insects go, it’s all in a days work. I have colleagues who have named dozens.
I’ve filed proposals with the American Ornithologists’ Union (now American Ornithologist’s Society) to officially “split” certain species, which have been accepted as valid. I’m currently tied up in reviewer hell in an article by a colleague that was supposed to split another species., which is accepted by most authorities but not by AOS. After 6 years of no progress by the lead author, I’ve told him I’m going to withdraw and write my own article.
Currently genetics is king, at least in vertebrates. If you don’t have genetic data, it’s difficult to split a species, a least in vertebrates.
To be clear, it’s considered extremely gauche to describe a new species and name it after yourself. But taxonomists routinely do name species for the person who first collected or identified it.
I’m imagining some sort of taxonomist bar with novelty bathroom door signs “lumpers” and “splitters”, with distressed taxonomists dancing in front of them trying to decide which one they are supposed to use.
Or deciding if they actually need two bathrooms for that, rather than 1 or 3 or 17.
It’s interesting to look at naming conventions for discoveries in different sciences-- In astronomy, for instance, comets are almost always named after their discoverers. But asteroids can be named almost anything, and objects larger than asteroids always get names from mythology (except for moons of Uranus, which for some reason come from Shakespeare).