State distribution in Australia, based on available literature

Cosmarium otus is a distinctive and rare species. Unfortunately, when Krieger (1933) described this species from the island of Sumatra, he did not provide lateral or apical views of the cell. Most likely, var. ornatum described by Scott et prescott (1961) from the nearby island of Borneo is identical to krieger's nominal variety. The central series of cell wall granules said to be charateristic of var. ornatum are hard to see when examining the cell in frontal view, contrary to the intermingled scrobiculae which krieger (l.c.) did depict (see also our fig. 11). On the other hand, any scrobiculae, deserves the status of a separate variety or even a separate species. Apart from the dubious record in Gronblad & al. (l.c.) C. otus has only been recorded within the Indo-Malaysian region, from indonesia, papua new Guinea (Vyverman 1991) and Japan (Hirano 1950). As far as known, our finds of C. otus are the first records for Australia. (Coesel & Dingley 2005)

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