This genus has a disjunct distribution, with the M. urophthalmus group being found in the Atlantic drainages of southeastern Mexico (southern Veracruz east to the Yucatán Peninsula and southwards), Belize, eastern Guatemala, northern Honduras and northeastern Nicaragua, while M. beani is the northernmost cichlid in the Pacific drainage, ranging from Jalisco to Sonora in northwestern Mexico.

[9] Both M. beani and M. urophthalmus are overall common and regarded as least concern by the IUCN, although certain local populations are under pressure from habitat loss, pollution, overfishing and introduced species.

[13][14] Conversely, M. urophthalmus has been introduced outside its native range in Oaxaca (Mexico), Florida (United States), the Philippines, Thailand and Singapore.

[1][11] Other reviews of many of the populations in the urophthalmus group found that genetic differences are very small without clear geographic structure, that there likely has been widespread translocations of the cichlids by humans in the pre-Columbian era, and that there is a large amount of individual variations in pattern and morphometrics, mostly depending on environmental factors.

[17][21][23] As a consequence, all proposed species that were directly checked in those studies have been synonymized with M. urophthalmus by Catalog of Fishes, leaving only the unchecked M. aguadae, M. amarus, M. ericymba and M. trispilus as still recognized in this group.

[1][2][18][24] Unlike Catalog of Fishes and the IUCN, FishBase continues to recognize thirteen species in this genus, including M. urophthalmus itself and eleven others in its group (indented in list):[24] The species Amphilophus istlanus (still included in Cichlasoma by some authorities) is a special case, as nDNA places it in Amphilophus, but mDNA places it in Mayaheros.