Human-induced salinization caused by the use of road deicing salts, agricultural practices, mining operations, and climate change is a major threat to the biodiversity and functioning of freshwater ecosystems. Yet, it is unclear if freshwater ecosystems are protected from salinization by current water quality guidelines. Leveraging an experimental network of land-based and in-lake mesocosms across North America and Europe, we tested how salinization—indicated as elevated chloride (Cl−) concentration—will affect lake food webs and if two of the lowest Cl− thresholds found globally are sufficient to protect these food webs. Our results indicated that salinization will cause substantial zooplankton mortality at the lowest Cl− thresholds established in Canada (120 mg Cl−/L) and the United States (230 mg Cl−/L) and throughout Europe where Cl− thresholds are generally higher. For instance, at 73% of our study sites, Cl− concentrations that caused a ≥50% reduction in cladoceran abundance were at or below Cl− thresholds in Canada, in the United States, and throughout Europe. Similar trends occurred for copepod and rotifer zooplankton. The loss of zooplankton triggered a cascading effect causing an increase in phytoplankton biomass at 47% of study sites. Such changes in lake food webs could alter nutrient cycling and water clarity and trigger declines in fish production. Current Cl− thresholds across North America and Europe clearly do not adequately protect lake food webs. Water quality guidelines should be developed where they do not exist, and there is an urgent need to reassess existing guidelines to protect lake ecosystems from human-induced salinization.

Freshwater salinization from anthropogenic activities-including the application of road deicing salts-is a global environmental concern, harming aquatic biota and drinking water quality. However, the relative sensitivity of zooplankton communities to salinization across large scales remains largely unknown. Performing experiments in parallel across North America and Europe, we show that there is substantial variation in the sensitivity of different zooplankton taxa to salinization, but that chloride sensitivity is more common and pronounced in crustaceans. This study demonstrates that the abundance and diversity of the communities can be reduced at chloride levels below common water quality guidelines (120-250 mg Cl À1 L À1 , depending on the study country). Our results suggest that freshwater biodiversity might be reduced by chloride contamination at a global scale.

Not all populations of a species have the same sensitivity to contaminants, yet no studies have assessed this variation for multiple species across large geographic regions. Our study is the first to quantify within-species variation in salt tolerance (chloride, Cl À ) by conducting experiments at 16 environmentally diverse locations and compiling published tolerances from laboratory studies. Across our study sites, we found that Cl À sensitivity varied up to 4.2x AE 3.0 SD within species. This variation was related to the species they co-existed with, suggesting that species interactions can modulate Cl À tolerance, making it difficult to predict how individual communities respond to Cl À increases. To adequately protect freshwater zooplankton from harm, water quality guidelines should be based on multiple populations and communities to incorporate variation in sensitivity.

1. The North American Great Plains contains thousands of lakes that vary in salinity from freshwater to hypersaline. Paleolimnological studies show that salinity levels in these lakes are tightly linked with climate, and current projections point to a more arid future in the region due to natural and anthropogenic climate change, potentially influencing lake salinity.2. Many zooplankton species are sensitive to changes in salinity, and their position near the base of the aquatic food web makes it important to understand how they might respond to increasing salinity levels. Zooplankton communities in lakes with rising salinity levels may exhibit changes in structure, including a shift toward more salinity-tolerant species and a reduction in abundance, species richness, and diversity. However, it is possible that dispersal of zooplankton among lakes could mitigate such community changes when migrant populations replace sensitive zooplankton with those that are locally adapted to higher salinities.3. To test if dispersal could reduce salinity-induced changes in zooplankton communities, we ran a field enclosure experiment at a freshwater lake in southern Saskatchewan where we manipulated salinity levels and zooplankton dispersal.We evaluated how salinity and dispersal influenced species identities and relative abundances (community structure) using multivariate statistics and comparing taxonomic and functional compositions among the different treatments (richness, diversity, and evenness). 4. We found that increasing salinity levels in our enclosures above that in our study lake resulted in lower zooplankton abundances and species richness levels, primarily due to the loss of cladoceran species. However, patterns in our multivariate analyses suggested that cladocerans were maintained in enclosures with salinity levels of 2.5 and 5.0 g/L when those enclosures received immigration from nearby lakes.5. In contrast, our univariate analyses failed to find evidence that immigration affected community structure (richness, diversity, evenness). The lack of significant statistical differences could suggest that dispersal does not have an effect, or it may have been a problem with statistical power, as a power analysis suggested that fairly large effect sizes would have been required to achieve statistical significance.

Over the last century, a rich literature has developed describing how the physical and chemical environment influences zooplankton communities, but there is little guidance on the suite of limnological variables that should be measured by zooplankton ecologists. We performed a literature review to assess (i) which variables were measured most often by zooplankton ecologists, (ii) which of these variables were consistently related to zooplankton abundance and richness and (iii) whether key variables were overlooked by investigators. Our results show that there is a core group of nine limnological variables that are measured most frequently, including lake surface area, pH, phosphorus, nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, conductivity, chlorophyll-a, maximum depth and temperature. These variables were among those most often associated with variation in zooplankton, but several others, including dissolved organic carbon, alkalinity and nitrate, were sampled infrequently, despite showing promise as important explanatory variables. The selection of variables in past studies did not correlate with how often those variables were significant in the literature, but instead, might have been related to their ease of measurement. Neglecting to measure important variables could have implications for fundamental and applied studies that aim to understand the factors structuring zooplankton communities and their response to environmental change.