(Confusingly, the article doesn’t elaborate on how a resistance against what’s effectively a physical attack can possibly work, but apparently it’s mainly a resistance against the many bioactive substances that ticks need to inject into the host in order to feed successfully, according to another paper from 2020.)

Once bitten, animals develop resistance that shrinks tick population

[Researchers] at Washington State University found that once host animals were exposed to ticks, they developed resistance to bites that dramatically shrank the tick population going forward.