Concentrations of Zn, Cd, Fe, Mn, Mg, Al, Ca, Cu, Ti, Sr, Ba and Ni in the zooplankton of 38 Canadian Shield lakes that vary widely in acidity, distance from Sudbury's metal smelters and zooplankton community composition are described, and dominant multielemental patterns are extracted using non-metric multidimensional scaling. Aluminum, Mn, Fe and Ti produced the strongest pattern in the data. Levels were higher in zooplankton from lakes of circum-neutral pH than from very acidic or alkaline lakes. This was attributed to lower levels of these metals in individual zooplankton taxa from acidic and alkaline lakes in comparison with circum-neutral lakes. Calcium, Sr, Cd and Cu were also correlated. Calcium and Sr were elevated while Cd and Cu were depressed in Daphnia-dominated zooplankton communities of non-acidic lakes which were distant from Sudbury. While seasonal succession of species is the principal cause of temporal variability in metal levels in the zooplankton of Shield lakes in central Ontario, variability among lakes is attributable to three factors — lake location, acidity and community composition.