For species that do not over‐winter, an essential part of the life cycle is the production of diapausing eggs. We use sequential sediment traps in southern Lake Michigan (1997‐2000) to capture settling Daphnia ephippia and sediments, characterizing ephippial production and sediment interactions during hazardous conditions. Each year, there was an enormous pulse of D. mendotae ephippia (ca. 7.2 × 10 13 ephippia, 1.2 × 10 14 dia...