The species composition of lentic communities often shifts along hydroperiod gradients, in part because temporary-habitat specialists replace closely related permanent-habitat specialists. These replacements reflect tradeoffs between traits that facilitate coexistence with permanent-habitat predators and those that prevent desiccation. The evidence for species replacements and the underlying tradeoffs is considerable in North America, but few studies have explored this pattern in other regions. We compared benthic communities in permanent and temporary habitats on the South Island of New Zealand. Ordination across 58 sites showed that community composition was distinctly different between the 2 types of habitats. Assemblages in permanent habitats had >2× the number of species as those in temporary habitats. We found little evidence for temporary-habitat specialists; i.e., species in temporary communities were a nested subset of those in permanent communities. Quantitative sampling at 12 intensively studied sites revealed that chironomids, water bugs, beetles, and crustaceans accounted for 90% of the biomass in temporary, but only 14% of the biomass in permanent habitats, which were dominated by mollusks, annelids, caddisflies, and odonates. Damselflies, dragonflies, caddisflies, and several other large-bodied taxa common in permanent habitats were absent from most temporary habitats. We propose 2 explanations for the absence of species replacements in these groups in the New Zealand habitats that we studied. First, drying is unpredictable within and between years, perhaps precluding the evolution of temporary-habitat specialization. Second, fish predation on benthic invertebrates, a driver for phylogenetic diversification in North America, appears to be comparatively weak in New Zealand. Comparative studies across a range of climates and faunas will be needed to identify the ecological and phylogenetic contexts that favor evolution of generalists vs specialists along permanence gradients.