Is there any term that describes the main example that goes through the entire research paper? One of the comments I received on my journal paper was that it lacks a "running example":


  the paper would benefit much from a running example that could be used in the introduction to motivate the idea and referred to in later sections to illustrate algorithms


I understand the idea of an example that works like a backbone throughout the paper and connects all the ideas and sections in order to make them easier to understand. 

Now my question is, do we call it "running example" or does it have any other term? I would like to add a brief on the example at the end of the introduction, but I'm baffled with what should I call it.

Note: my field is computer science, but I believe this applies to some other areas too.
When I use a running example (as I frequently do), I just call it a running example.  I don't know any reason why that wouldn't be a good enough term.