We detected substantial differences in transcriptional WGP between larvae and adults. The number of genes showing transcriptional WGP in larvae was approximately twice and four times higher in larvae than in adults for DE and AS genes, respectively. Similarly, the number and level of expression of genes associated with the heat-shock response differed substantially between life stages. This result is not surprising as it also matches our expectations from heat tolerance data in D. mojavensis, where WGP had a higher contribution to larval tolerance when compared to adult tolerance (Diaz et al., 2020). This is consistent with the literature on thermal tolerance in several organisms, reporting a greater thermal tolerance at early life stages than in adults (Sørensen and Loeschcke, 2002; Zizzari and Ellers, 2014). Larvae are more bound to the fluctuations of their environment since they are constrained to their substrate, while flying adults can seek more suitable thermal microclimates (Krebs and Loeschcke, 1995; Feder et al., 1997). Our results suggest that larvae may cope with thermal acclimation in WGP by inducing the expression of genes associated with proteolysis and/or inducing the alternative splicing of genes that are not directly related to the more energetically expensive heat-shock response.