We are grateful to the Referee#1 for the very positive comment on our paper.

The topic on the role of sponges in shaping the coralligenous build-ups and other recent Mediterranean bioconstructions is new and the constructive vs destructive activities of these organisms were not well investigated yet. In agreement with the Referee comment we are already working on the taxonomic characterization of the sponge communities trying to discriminate boring from insinuating species and quantitatively evaluate their bioconstructive vs bioerosive effects on the build-ups. The aggregation ability of the insinuating sponges is a new aspect and we appreciated the suggestion of the Referee. This aspect will be surely added in the new paper we are planning to elaborate on the specific role of sponges on the coralligenous bioconstructions.

This paper deals with the modern state of bioconstructions of the Mediterranean Sea known as “le coralligène” (I tend to prefer to keep the original french term). This paper is of broad interest, provides new insights, is well structured and pretty well written. Here are some remarks the authors might find useful.

While mentioning a skeletal organism (or a group of organisms) for the first time, please add the basic mineralogy of its skeleton (HMC, LMC, aragonite, especially for the Peyssonneliales, opaline). This appears important (for me) in terms of “reactivity”, ageing, preservation and pathways of early diagenesis.

We appreciated the suggestion of the reviewer, and we will include the indication about the composition of the main taxa. This also allows to confirm the good preservation of the skeletal components in terms of the early neomorphic processes on the basis of our results and we will add a short comment about this aspect in the Discussion.

Is there any idea to put a number attached to “high biodiversity”, how high is very high and how it is assessed or calculated?

The biodiversity associated with coralligenous has already been evaluated so far. A list of the main taxa related to coralligenous is included in Ballesteros (2006). In the studied site, Bracchi et al. (2022) evaluated the associated biodiversity with a 2D and 3D approach and we added these information accordingly, as reported from lines 92 to 94.

You might eventually better define the basic attributes of “le coralligène”, its distinguishing characters (as a specific system), and its biogeohistoric origin (at least early Cretaceous in my view).

The term coralligenous (coralligéne), as the reviewer already indicated, is derived from the French literature (Marion, 1883; Pérès and Picard, 1964), and generally indicates mesophotic bioconstructions of the Mediterranean Sea, primarily built by crustose coralline algae. In recent years, the definition of coralligenous is under review, also due to the exploration efforts in the deepest part of the shelf. We will resume the main characters of coralligenous in the first sentences of the Introduction.

The crustose coralline algae have an excellent fossil record from the Early Cretaceous onwards (Aguirre et al., 2010), but build-ups made of them, similar to coralligenous, did not date back so much. Its distribution throughout the fossil record dates back at least to the Quaternary. Present-day coralligenous is Holocene in age (Sartoretto et al., 1996; Bertolino et al., 2017; Basso et al., 2022).

Be very careful with the term “biomineralization” (line 68-70). The work of Trichet and Défarge (1995) on organomineralization might be of value here.

We thank the reviewer for this remark. We refer here to autochthonous micrite as a product of induced or influenced biomineralization, which, for the influenced one, corresponds to the organomineralization processes discussed in Trichet and Défarge (1995). This aspect will be clarified in the text and the suggested reference will be added and discussed in the introduction paragraph.

Eventually add more inscriptions and arrows into your figures, you might also try combined figures, one overview and one zoomed in to the necessary detail.

We believe that the figures already contain several inscriptions and arrows that help the reader to understand them. Therefore, we prefer not to add some more, but we are going to make the ones already inserted more visible. Overviews are reported in Figs. 4, 5, 7 and Zoomed-in are reported in Figs. 8, 9, 10, 11.

Eventually replace “micrite” by microcrystalline (in proper place), micrite is sediment (matrix), automicrite is not sediment, it has now history of transport!

We thank the reviewer for this comment, and we know that there is an on-going debate on this topic. In this paper, we used the term micrite sensu microcrystalline calcite of Folk (1959) referring to the crystal size of this component. We use the term in a non-genetic descriptive sense adding autochthonous or detrital to underline the difference among the two components. We considered the autochthonous micrite as synonym of automicrite, referring to the component deposited in situ through influenced mineralization, whereas the detrital micrite is a “pure” sediment type derived from physical processes. The terminology used in the paper will be clarified in the Introduction.

Fluorescence is not a distinguishing attribute of automicrite, microcrystalline sediment and early cements might also fluoresce (Neuweiler et al, 2000, 2003 in GEOLOGY). Instead the locus of fluorophores is crucial. For identifying automicrite a combination of petrographic attributes should be used (see some sort of recent review in Neuweiler at al., 2023 in SEDIMENTOLOGY)…..and by now, you should know who I am.

According to the suggestion, the autochthonous micrite was identified through morphology, crystallography and fluorescence. This approach was mandatory because also detrital micrite rich in organic matter (organic detrital micrite = ODM in the paper) shows fluoresce under UV excitation. We thanked the reviewer for the suggesting papers that we will consider in the revision of our manuscript.

Congrats for this paper, again, please be more careful with the terminology

We will add specific references to the terminology at which we adhere.

(eventually also more selective and specific with the “geological” references (too much blur there);

We will take care to the geological references during the revision of the manuscript.

Keep it as simple and fundamental as possible (mention the facts, not the interpretations), and admit what we currently do not know) and, in the future, you might dig a bit deeper what concerns the (organo-)chemical attributes and precipitation process of the automicrite in scope. Try to catch it in the making (caught in the act) by using bio-fixation methods. Great material, keep going, very nice, super potential!

We thank the reviewer for the final suggestions and his positive evaluation of the paper. The manuscript describes for the first time new processes and products related to the microcrystalline component inside the coralligenous, about which there are still lots of things to investigate. One of the approaches, for example, should be the characterization of the organic matter in autochthonous micrite through the biomolecular approach in GC-MS.

Rethink about your title, I suggest…. The constructional architecture of coralligenous build-ups……….

We appreciate the suggestion, but we prefer to maintain the original title because we believe it matches the content of the paper.