Phenotypic plasticity allows the same genotype to produce distinctly different morphological, physiological or behavioural characteristics depending on the environmental conditions the individual, and even its parents or more remote ancestors, have experienced. However, phenotypic change is limited by physiological, genetic and environmental constraints, which can lead to trade-offs between life-history traits. In this thesis, I investigated the intra- and transgenerational effects of larval nutrition on life-history traits of a ubiquitous pest of apiculture: the greater wax moth Galleria mellonella (Lepidoptera: Pyralidae). I found that a low-nutrition larval diet and periods of fasting negatively affected the moths’ development rate, body size and adult longevity. However, compared with the moths that were reared on a standard diet, the mothsthat were subjected to fasting or a low-nutrition larval diet exhibited lower mortality from infection by an entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana and stronger encapsulation responses to synthetic immune challenge at the larval and adult stages. Furthermore, the activation of encapsulation response at the pupal stage reduced the strength of adult encapsulation response in males reared on a standard diet but not in males reared on a low-nutrition diet. In contrast to the general pattern, a subgroup of females subjected to a relatively short fast had distinctly high growth rates after the fast, but perhaps as a cost of this compensatory response they exhibited particularly weak encapsulation responses and short adult lifespans. Maternal, but not paternal, lownutrition diet increased the survival time of offspring infected with B. bassiana. In addition, a low-nutrition parental diet had sex-specific effects on development time and body mass of the offspring. My research demonstrates that larval nutrition has diverse and long-lasting effects on immune function and other life-history traits – as well as on associations between the different life-history traits – in G. mellonella. The studies also add to the growing body of evidence indicating that environmental conditions experienced by the parents can contribute to variation in offspring phenotype.