In contrast, the observation and enumeration of target species of interest through marker-based approaches (e.g. FISH: fluorescence in situ hybridization) enables the quantification of absolute abundances of those species identified through sequencing. This practice not only allows soil ecologists to 1) verify if the change observed in relative abundance indeed translates to shifts in the community \cite{Piwosz2020} , but also expands the interpretation of sequencing data to 2) localize and visualize species of interest in situ \cite{Martin_2020} and 3) to hypothesize about ecological implications behind changing abundances of target species in soil samples (REF).  Applications of FISH to soil samples are rare which may be due to the fact that the technique was mainly applied in marine and limnic ecological research and has been considered as challenging in soil mainly due to low activity of soil bacteria (i.e. low copy number of 16S rRNA genes per cell). These limitations have been largely addressed through methodological adaptations that increase fluorescent intensities \cite{Schmidt_2013,Stoecker2010} and we suggest to include such targeted enumeration if the dynamics of certain phylogenetic groups in soil are to be understood on a quantitative basis.