[4] They are carnivorous, feeding upon the eggs of various planthoppers in the family Delphacidae, and thus are important in the biological control of pests.

The genus is distributed throughout the Holarctic of the Northern Hemisphere, but species are also found in the tropics, in China, South America, Australia, and the Indo-Pacific.

[11] In 1992, Wheeler and Henry published a treatise reviewing the Miridae family occurring in the Holarctic, and formally corrected the nomenclaturial error in accordance with the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature,[11] with the result that the type species was henceforth called Tytthus pubescens (Knight, 1931).

[3] Similarities in a number of structures including the U-shaped endosoma (internal holding pouch for the tip of the aedeagus), the fine setae (bristles) of the parempodia, and the relative small size of the male genitalia, led Schuh in 1974 to place Tytthus in the Leucophoropterini along with the genus Karoocapsus.

[4] One of the early success stories of biological pest control was Frederick Muir's importation of Tytthus mundulus from Queensland, Australia to Hawaii to eat the eggs of Perkinsiella saccharicida that fed on the sugar cane crops.