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.