[4] Although Silvestri based the original description of this species on type material collected from Java, this species has since proven to be a pantropical synanthrope,[2] found in Louisiana, Florida, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Panama, Brazil, India, Taiwan, and Fiji, among other places.

[5] In 1920, the French myriapodologist Henri W. Brölemann originally described P. hilaris as a subspecies of P. jacobsoni found in Zanzibar,[6] but some authorities now regard this millipede to be a separate species.

[8] They based the original description of this species on several specimens collected from the hothouses for tropical plants in the Kew Gardens in England.

[5][8] The geographic origin of this species remained a mystery until 2012, when the zoologist Robert Mesibov reported the discovery of P. panporus specimens collected in 1986 from a remote tropical rainforest in the Cape York peninsula of Queensland in Australia,[5] which authorities now consider likely to be the native range of this species.

The species P. monteithi is found in the rainforest from Daintree National Park west of Cape Tribulation to the Malbon Thompson range on the coast southeast of Cairns in Queensland.