Over 80 % of the world animals have complex life-cycles with multiple life-stages.  In many of these species, each life stage experiences dramatically different selection pressures, due to living in different environments and specialising in different tasks. For example, caterpillars must avoid predation while feeding on leaves, while butterflies must fly, find mates and feed on nectar. However, all butterflies were once caterpillars, and they share the exact same genome. This raises a fundamental evolutionary question – to what extent does the resetting of the body plan at metamorphosis allow for independent adaptation at each life stage? Answering this question is essential to predict how animals might adapt to environmental change. In this talk I will describe a recent collaboration looking at the evolution of colouration across life-stages of Australian Shield bugs, as well as future research plans to investigate the evolution of thermal tolerance in Australian leaf beetles.