Plant resistance to herbivorous arthropods results from the expression of biochemical, morphological, and physiological traits that reduce the impact of herbivores on plant fitness (or, in the context of agriculture, crop yield or quality) (Kant et al. 2015). The inherent resistance of plants to the arthropods that feed on them is of interest to ecologists because plant resistance is an important factor in structuring terrestrial communities – that is, the patterns of expression of resistance-related traits by plants help determine the abundance and distribution of herbivores, which in turn affects other organisms associated with herbivores (Glassmire et al. 2016; Visakorpi et al. 2019; Wimp et al. 2005). Plant resistance is also of interest to economic entomologists and agronomists because the activities of arthropod herbivores often constrain agricultural productivity, and the use of resistant crop varieties can reduce these impacts (Smith 2021). Consequently, two parallel bodies of research and theory have developed to understand plant resistance. The study of plant resistance by applied entomologists and agronomists is guided by a framework developed over 70 years ago by Painter (1951) in his monograph, Insect Resistance in Crop Plants (Stout et al. 2024). The ecological and evolutionary framework for the study of plant resistance was developed at roughly the same time (Fraenkel 1959; Ehlich and Raven 1964, Hairston et al. 1960), and the study of the ecology and evolution of plant resistance has since emerged as one of the most vigorous and fertile subdisciplines in ecology (Stout et al. 2024). However, insights from the ecological literature have not been consistently related to the applied literature and vice versa (Kogan 1986; Stout et al. 2024).