Diel vertical migration (DVM) is a pervasive behavior in marine and freshwater food webs and affects processes ranging from individual physiology to ecosystem function. Many pelagic organisms, ranging from the smallest autotrophs to the largest predators, undergo DVM to survive, grow and reproduce in vertically heterogeneous pelagic environments. Despite the common treatment of DVM as a population-level process, there is evidence to suggest that the timing and frequency of vertical movements of individual organisms may be highly variable within overall population migrations. Such asynchronous behavior could result in continuous and multiple vertical interchanges across habitat boundaries, which could have multiplicative effects on estimates and inferences of ecological processes across boundary layers when compared to a single vertical interchange often assumed under the population-level view of DVM. This session will extend beyond the population-level perspective of DVM and explore DVM at an individual level for organisms ranging from autotrophs to apex predators. We invite contributions that present new methodologies for assessing and quantifying DVM by individuals, empirical and modeling studies that address the causes and consequences of individual variation in DVM, and syntheses that evaluate the impact of individual variability in DVM on population-, community-, and ecosystem-level processes. This symposium will bring together researchers and managers from freshwater and marine systems working across multiple trophic levels, and thus supports the meeting’s theme of building fisheries networks across ecological and geographic boundaries.