Several species of Collembola survive stressful desiccating conditions by absorbing water vapour from the environment. To obtain insight into the transcriptomic responses underlying this 'water vapour absorption' mechanism we subjected Folsomia candida (Collembola) to transcriptome profiling. We show that ecologically relevant desiccation stress leads to strong time-dependent transcriptomic changes. Exposure of F. candida to 98.2% relative humidity over an interval of 174 h resulted in a high number of gene transcripts being differentially expressed (up to 41%; P-value < 0.05). Additional Gene Ontology analyses suggest that carbohydrate transport, sugar catabolism and cuticle maintenance are biological processes involved in combating desiccation. However, many additional pathways seem to be affected; additional experiments are needed to elucidate which responses are primarily linked to desiccation resistance.