In the wild, T. putrescentiae occurs throughout the world in a wide range of habitats, including "grasslands, old hay, mushrooms, and the nest of bees and ducks".

[1] It is a common pest of stored products, especially those with a high protein and fat content (meat, cheese, nuts and seeds, dried eggs, etc.).

It has been found to cause copra itch among people who handle copra in the tropics, skin and respiratory allergies among people handling raw hams in Italy, and dermatitis in an Austrian butcher's shop.

This original description covered both a mite and a springtail, collected from garden soil, flower pots and rotting leaves at an undisclosed location in the Austrian Empire, and provided too little information for the mite to be confidently assigned to any family.

[2] The identity of Schrank's species was not fixed until Phyllis Robertson revised the genus Tyrophagus in 1959,[3] and designated a neotype of T. putrescentiae from Oudemans' collections.