Understanding how disturbance events impact community organization is crucial for management and conservation of aquatic species. Natural disturbance regimes (NDR), such as the seasonal filling and drying of ponds, play a central role in shaping the evolutionary life histories of organisms. We posit that NDRs prime communities with resilience mechanisms such as species and trait diversity, to better respond to climate change disturbance. Heightened species richness increases the number of possible functional traits and asynchronous species responses available in a system, enhancing the chance of resistant species able to compensate for the loss of vulnerable species. Body size is an important trait regulating physiological and behavioral outcomes and can shift in response to environmental cues, producing feedback across ecological scales. Body size provides an important metric for phenotypic flexibility that can be measured across taxa. We measured species richness (species diversity) and body size (trait diversity) in fish and amphibians in temporary and permanent ponds across the Willamette Valley, OR and Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge, WA. We hypothesized that communities in temporary ponds, experiencing more frequent NDRs, will be less species rich but exhibit higher body size variability compared to communities in permanent ponds. We found permanent ponds to have both higher species diversity and body size variability. This in situ comparison of species richness and size structure, paired with future experimental exploration of resiliency thresholds will provide insight into community-level response to disturbance, with implications for the importance of phenotypic flexibility, species diversity, or the convergence of both mechanisms in resilience to climate change.