Ary Hoffmann is an ARC Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Melbourne working in the areas of climate change adaptation and pest/disease vector control. His group undertakes research on adaptation of organisms (particularly invertebrates) to environmental stresses including climate change and chemical pollutants, using field sites along eastern Australia, in the Victorian mountains, and in wetlands around Melbourne. His group also develops integrated pest control options, investigates how landscape changes can be harnessed to provide pest control services, contributes to novel approaches for suppressing dengue mosquito vectors, and examines new ways to predict species distribution shifts under climate change. He has a strong interest in using genetics, genomics and invertebrate biodiversity for monitoring environmental health and developing resilience indicators for biodiversity and sustainable production. The eastern Australian Drosophila transect and climate change adaptation: what have we learnt? Global climate change is now widely acknowledged as a looming threat to many species and communities while providing an opportunity for others to expand their range. A number of modelling frameworks have been developed to predict likely changes but these largely ignore the potential for genetic adaptation and plastic responses to counter threats and create opportunities for shifting to new niches. In this talk I review several decades of research to understand what we have learnt about adaptive processes from Drosophila research, and how this knowledge might inform climate change adaptation more generally. I consider approaches that focus on specific genetic polymorphisms and chromosomal rearrangements, and then move on to insights provided by –omics approaches. I also address the impact of plastic changes across and within generations on adaptation. The Drosophila data are used to discuss the more general issue of how adaptive responses might be understood and maximised in species that are particularly threatened by climate change.