While NanoSIMS data can be quantitated to the extent that standards and good analytical and statistical practices are used, the small scale of the analyses (typically less than 50 x 50 µm 2 ) can present challenges with translating the results to the population scale. This issue is often encountered in microbial ecology studies, where single cell incorporation of an isotopically labeled substrate can vary by over 10x among cells and some cell types can be relatively rare, such as non-cyanobacterial nitrogen fixing bacteria in the open ocean . As a result, there is demand for automation and high throughput to increase data set sizes to collect representative samples. Cosmochemistry and other fields have similar needs. As discussed above, a higher brightness primary ion source is one potential route for increasing throughput. Other factors include stage reproducibility and navigation.