This was one of the first species described in what is now Pseudophilautus. At the time (1876), it was called Ixalus stictomerus.

Like most Pseudophilautus species, P. stictomerus is known from only a small portion of Sri Lanka, in this case some western lowland forests. We were in the heart of that area, and they were fairly common.

The "Orange-canthal" part of the English name is somewhat silly, as it applies only to a fairly small proportion of individuals. It refers to the ridges from the snout to the eye, and from the eye to the forearm insertion point, which can be thought of as a single ridge bisecting the eye socket (but of course absent from the actual eye). In some cases, such as for this individual, that ridge is kind of orange-ish.