Spermatozoan or spermatozoal?

Spermatozoon is a single mature sperm cell. The plural is spermatozoa.

Which of the following is correct: "Spermatozoal motility" or "spermatozoan motility"? Or should it be something else?

Googling seems to find both "spermatozoal" and "spermatozoan".

Solution 1:

According to Pubmed:

• spermatozoan motility yields 19 results
• spermatozoic motility yields 0
• spermatozoal motility yields 45
• sperm motility yields 1399

Based on the wider usage, the breadth of journals it's used in, and the more recent use (several in press articles) "sperm motility" is the most popular.

None of the terms seem completely inappropriate, though the low use of spermatozoic (and only use in non-English journals in the 1950s), suggest it may best be avoided.

I think Pubmed is more informative than the dictionary in this case.

Pubmed searches were for the above terms in title of articles.

Edit: Added sperm motility as mentioned by @FumbleFingers, which is the clear winner.

Solution 2:

Webster's medical dictionary lists spermatozoan but not spermatozoal or spermatozoic.

Solution 3:

The OED lists both spermatozoan and spermatozoic. Glowbe (Global corpus of web-based English) has 8 instances of speratozoan, and none of either spermatozoic or spermatozoal.