Replicating Shepard and Sumner’s results was our primary objective for this paper, as we state in the discussion. In future work we would like to increase the scale of the simulations by adding more trichomes and a deeper domain to (hopefully) get more robust reticulate formation. We would also like to do a quantitative analysis on experimental data to in order to fit the model to the data. Finally, we would like to see whether this same minimal system plus photomovement is sufficient to produce the cone-shaped structures documented by Walter, Petroff and others. If successful, we could then link macroscopic features of similar stromatolites back to the parameters of the trichomes, as well as understand the contribution of each factor in the model to building these structures. We have added this explanation to the conclusions section.
Round 2: Author Response to Reviewer 1 We have addressed the reviwer’s requests: (1)