The chemical composition of recent and fossil organic-walled dinoflagellate cyst walls and its diversity is poorly understood and analyses on single microscopic specimens are rare. A series of infrared spectroscopic experiments resulted in the proposition of a standardized attenuated total reflection micro-Fourier transform infrared-based method that allows the collection of robust data sets consisting of spectra from individual dinocysts. These data sets are largely devoid of nonchemical artifacts inherent to other infrared spectrochemical methods, which have typically been used to study similar specimens in the past. The influence of sample preparation, specimen morphology and size and spectral data processing steps is also assessed within this methodological framework. As a result, several guidelines are proposed which facilitate the collection and qualitative interpretation of highly reproducible and repeatable spectrochemical data. These, in turn, pave the way for a systematic exploration of dinocyst chemistry and its assessment as a chemotaxonomical tool or proxy.

最近和化石有机壁甲藻囊壁的化学成分及其多样性知之甚少，对单个显微标本的分析很少见。一系列红外光谱实验提出了一种标准化的衰减全反射微傅里叶变换红外方法，该方法允许收集由单个恐龙的光谱组成的稳健数据集。这些数据集在很大程度上没有其他红外光谱化学方法固有的非化学伪影，这些方法过去通常用于研究类似的标本。样品制备、标本形态和大小以及光谱数据处理步骤的影响也在该方法框架内进行了评估。因此，提出了一些指导方针，这些指导方针有助于收集和定性解释高度可重复和可重复的光谱化学数据。这些反过来又为系统探索双囊化学及其作为化学分类学工具或代理的评估铺平了道路。