Individual habitat choices combine with environmental conditions to determine community composition. Predators' direct and indirect effects play a particularly influential role on habitat choice by affecting prey behavior and morphology. However, resources such as food, refugia, or water are also critical features that factor into habitat selection. Balancing trade-offs between predation threat and resource availability is therefore of particular importance as individuals choose between long- and short-term reproductive potential, ultimately affecting community structure. We investigated the effects of trade-offs between predation threat and resource availability on the community composition of aquatic bromeliad communities in Guanacaste, Costa Rica. We implemented a 2 x 3 complete factorial design across 30 bromeliad communities to observe the effects of a predation-resource trade-off on macroinvertebrate communities. Using PERMANOVA statistical analyses, we found that, contrary to our predictions, increasing levels of fine particulate organic matter (FPOM) had a significant negative impact on mosquito larval abundance in bromeliads. Additionally, while predation threat significantly reduced the abundance of mosquitoes, maximum bromeliad water volume significantly increased mosquito larval abundance. This positive effect of bromeliad size indicates that drought tolerance in highly ephemeral systems may play a critical role in mosquito community structure. Conversely to mosquitoes, we found the abundance of Chironomid larvae significantly increased with increasing FPOM and decreased with predators. Our results highlight how bottom-up and top-down pressures combine to determine community composition, and how variation in life history affects how species experience environmental pressures differently. These results are important as they show that predation risk likely impacts habitat selection. However, the consequences of FPOM inputs are more complex than previously hypothesized. Additionally, desiccation risk potentially significantly affects habitat selection within these systems, suggesting that climate-related environmental impacts may begin to disrupt normal ecological processes that structure aquatic communities.