Discussion
Although differences in the level of predictability of environmental
cues within and across generations might result in the decoupling of WGP
and TGP, there is transcriptional evidence in some organisms where both
types of plasticity co-exist (Shama et al., 2016; Bell and Stein, 2017;
Hales et al., 2017; Webster et al., 2018; Clark et al., 2019; Bernal et
al., 2022). We consider the case of the xeric-adapted D.
mojavensis where we have previously detected adaptive thermal
plasticity within and across generations to address fundamental
questions on how selection shapes the transcriptional landscape of these
plastic responses. By implementing a full factorial design, we expand
our scope of transcriptional plasticity to consider the role of
alternatively spliced genes (Venables et al., 2012). With this approach,
we provide compelling evidence demonstrating substantial transcriptional
differences between WGP and TGP, where alternative splicing mechanisms
play a major role in WGP but not in TGP. We demonstrate that
transcriptional TGP is more prevalent in the larva stage than in adults,
as expected from the level of parent-to-offspring environmental
predictability (Diaz et al., 2020). Finally, we provide evidence for a
transcriptional counterbalance in TGP, where parental acclimation seems
to compensate for the low gene expression caused by thermal stress in
the offspring generation.