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I'm writing a lab on sexual dimorphism in Arctic foxes. As such, I use the words 'dog' and 'vixen' fairly often. In the discussion section, I compare the results from the lab with the results from research on other animals. The most relevant research I consider pertains to dimorphism among dogs (Canis lupus: the kind we keep as pets and their immediate relatives).

The term 'dog' denotes a subspecies of Canis lupus, males of that subspecies, and male foxes.

There are ways to disambiguate what I'm writing, but none of them are elegant.

I'm considering using 'tod' or 'reynard' instead. Are either preferred in biological writing? If not, is there an alternative?

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Hal
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    could just say males and females... this is how I write when referring to flies in my writing. e.g. "...body size for males and females was measured from..." – rg255 Feb 10 '16 at 16:27
  • Female foxes are called vixen. But there is no specific term for a male fox. In fact, it would be much better to say "male" or "female" fox in a scientific context in which "fox" would mean the species, as rg255 suggested. – WYSIWYG Feb 10 '16 at 16:36
  • @rg255 WYSIWYG I was doing that initially. The problem was that males and females is ambiguous when comparing two or more sets of sexes (e.g. Arctic fox males and Arctic fox females with dog males and dog females). Specifying the species disambiguates things at the cost of brevity and doesn't solve the problem of repetitiveness (i.e. after some number of occurrences of 'males' by itself and in 'females', its repetitiveness becomes obnoxious.). I might just have to make do, but it would be better if there were an acceptable substitute. – Hal Feb 10 '16 at 18:46
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    Another thing you could try is using abbreviations like mF, fD, etc. These need to be defined of course... – Gerhard Feb 10 '16 at 21:31
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    It seems that we agree that there are no other terms within the realm ob biology. Would Academia.SE or English.SE be a better for this question then? – Remi.b Feb 11 '16 at 00:09
  • Just use "C. lupus" instead of "dog" when referring to that species. – Display Name Feb 25 '16 at 13:24

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