It is an aquatic species that occurs on vegetation in permanent and ephemeral waterbodies such as ponds and still-water pools of slow moving creeks, surrounded by forest, savannah or grassland. It is also found in flooded plains and at the edges of ponds, swamps, frequently in mildly brackish water. It breeds in permanent streams, and eggs and very large tadpoles can be found in the water. It is considered to be a very adaptable species. It has been reported from rice fields in Trinidad (pending confirmation of this nominal species' presence in Trinidad). Adults aestivate in the soil during the dry season (Lynch 2006).

This species is an active forager which feeds on a wide range of invertebrates, arachnids, crustaceans (crabs) and annelids (Downie et al. 2010, Falico et al. 2012).

Pseudis paradoxa is currently recognized as occurring from the Mearim River Basin in Maranhão State, Brazil; west across a vast swath of the Amazon Basin; into Colombia, Venezuela (Rojas-Runjaic et al. 2005), Guyana, French Guiana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago (Murphy 1997); and south into Peru (Morales and Chandler 1992) and Bolivia (Moravec and Aparicio 2004).

The distribution of this species in the 2008 assessment was restricted to "the type locality ("Surinami"), and the Brazilian states of Amapá, Roraima and Maranhão (see Aguiar-Jr. et al. 2007)". However, the accompanying map did not reflect this instead retaining the distribution of the 2004 assessment, which delimited and mapped the species south into Argentina. The map now reflects this change and is the result of the southern records in the Paraná River Basin - including Paraguay and Argentina (see Falico et al. 2012) - being reassigned to Pseudis platensis.

Conservation Actions In-Place
Several protected areas occur within its range. 

Research Needed
Additional taxonomic studies are required to elucidate the status of this species and that of Pseudis platensis.