This species occupies a number of habitat types including lowland scrub forest, grassland, agricultural land, pastureland, and urban areas. Sub-fossorial in habit, it is also found in forest floor leaf-litter. It is mostly a nocturnal species that is only active diurnally during the rainy season. It breeds in temporary rain pools and other bodies of still water, including artificial ones, and reproduces by larval development. This species is tolerant to habitat disturbance and can occur in modified areas, such as non-intensively farmed agricultural land.

This species was previously thought to be a very widespread species, occurring from Hunan, China west throughout most of South Asia, including Sri Lanka. However, following genetic, morphological and acoustic analysis, subpopulations from south and west of the Red River Valley of Yunnan, China, and northern Vietnam; through Myanmar west to eastern Bangladesh and Mizoram, India, and south through Thailand and Indochina, through the Malay Peninsula to Singapore have now been assigned to Microhyla mukhlesuri (Hasan et al. 2014). Subpopulations from central and northeastern parts of Bangladesh, and from West Bengal, Assam, and Nagaland in India have now been assigned to M. mymensinghensis (Hasan et al. 2014). Subpopulations from Pakistan were erroneously identified as this species and multiple recent studies have confirmed its absence in the country (Garg et al. 2019, Gorin et al. 2020, Jablonski et al. 2020). Those in Punjab and Islamabad districts in Pakistan have now been reallocated to M. nilphamariensis (Jablonski et al. 2020, Akram et al. 2021). It was also previously thought to occur in Nepal, but this is no longer the case; these records may belong to other species in the genus. Subsequently all of these records have been removed from its distribution map.

This species is now known to be restricted to peninsular India and Sri Lanka (Hasan et al. 2014). There are records from Bhutan from Royal Manas National Park (Das et al. 2016), but these require taxonomic confirmation following the new restricted taxonomic concept of this species and are considered presence uncertain in the map. In India, this species is found in the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh (Garg et al. 2018). It occurs at elevations up to 2,000 m asl.

Conservation Actions In-Place
This species is found near and possibly within many protected areas throughout its range.

Research Needed
Additional taxonomic research is recommended in light of the cryptic species present in this complex, and to determine its distribution in relation to other Microhyla (India Red List Assessment Workshop October 2020). There is a potential need for monitoring the population status of this species in Sri Lanka and India given the potential localized threats of habitat loss and agrochemical pollution.