Widespread variation in salt tolerance within freshwater zooplankton species reduces the predictability of community-level salt tolerance

The salinization of freshwaters is a global threat to aquatic biodiversity. We quantified variation in chloride (Clâ\u88\u92) tolerance of 19 freshwater zooplankton species in four countries to answer three questions: (1) How much variation in Clâ\u88\u92 tolerance is present among populations? (2) What factors predict intraspecific variation in Clâ\u88\u92 tolerance? (3) Must we account for intraspecific variation to accurately predict community Clâ\u88\u92 tolerance? We conducted field mesocosm experiments at 16 sites and compiled acute LC50s from published laboratory studies. We found high variation in LC50s for Clâ\u88\u92 tolerance in multiple species, which, in the experiment, was only explained by zooplankton community composition. Variation in species-LC50 was high enough that at 45% of lakes, community response was not predictable based on species tolerances measured at other sites. This suggests that water quality guidelines should be based on multiple populations and communities to account for large intraspecific variation in Clâ\u88\u92 tolerance