The genus Orestes combines relatively small and elongated Phasmatodea species from Southeast and East Asia.

[2][3][4][5] The relatively large distribution area extends from Southeast to East Asia and extends from the Andamans, over Sumatra, the Malay Peninsula, Borneo and Singapore to Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand and South China including Hong Kong to the south of Japan.

When touched, they drop to the ground with their forelegs and antennae stretched out and the middle and rear legs bent against the body, where they playing dead.

[14] As part of the description of six new species from Vietnam, Joachim Bresseel and Jérôme Constant in 2018 introduced a new delimitation between the genera Pylaemenes and Orestes,[5] which was confirmed by genetic analysis in 2021.

While Orestes guangxiensis is only parthenogenetically bred, the species listed under PSG number 192 was briefly kept as a sexual strain from Thailand around 2000.

[8][18][19] Another purely parthenogenic stock, which was imported from the north of Taiwan in 2008, was temporarily referred to as Pylaemenes guangxiensis 'Taiwan'.

Another species is Orestes draegeri collected in Dong Nai in 2012, which is listed under PSG number 397 and was initially called Pylaemenes sp.

According to more recent studies, the stocks of PSG number 192 from Thailand and West Malaysia, originally kept as Orestes mouhotii, can be assigned to this species.

The closely related, real Orestes mouhotii has been in breeding in both sexes from the Kirirom National Park in Cambodia since 2015.

[10] The third sexually breeding species is Orestes krijnsi, which was found in 2014 in the Núi Chúa National Park and initially called Pylaemenes sp.

The species Orestes subcylindricus, which has been valid again since 2018, was initially assumed to have been collected in 2011 in the Cúc Phương National Park.

The real Orestes subcylindricus was only collected in 2021 by Bresseel and Constant in Mau Son, Vietnam, near the type locality, and has been bred parthenogenetically since then.

Sexual stocks were also imported from Kẻ Gỗ Nature Reserve and from Kon Ka Kinh National Park in 2018.

The latter, together with two sexually bred species collected in 2019 in Đắk Nông and Ta Dung, are among the smallest known representatives of the genus to date.

One of the stocks from Kong Plong closely resembles a species described in 2018 as Pylaemenes konchurangensis and was therefore named by Bresseel as Orestes cf.

From the animals collected in 2022, three further sexual breeding strains were established, two from the Vũ Quang and one from Xuan Lien.

Another sexual breeding stock that based to a female collected in July 2016 in the Ngo Luong nature reserve was initially called Orestes sp.

Also in 2013 Elena Tkacheva and Mikhail Berezin collected a species belonging to Orestes in Borneo, more precisely in Sepilok, which was described in 2016 as Pylaemenes elenamikhailorum.

From the Andamans, a sexual stock collected by Christoph Röhrs has been in breeding since 2018, whose representatives have been identified as sister species to Orestes mouhotii.