There is not enough evidence to support mutation as a primary mechanism that drove evolution.

The authors of this paper http://www.pnas.org... do state that novel advantageous mutations occurred. However they didn't go into any detail as to what form these mutations took or how they provided advantage. The reason I think the authors inferred beneficial mutations rather than directly observed them was because their method " tracking the allele frequencies of injected microsatellites" did not involve actual analysis of the beneficial mutations. The mutating microsatellites themselve are most likely not involved in the changing code providing advantage, as they take up a very small percentage of the genome and often mutate without having any effect on the host as microsatellites are non-portein coding. To describe a mutation and its benefit would have the following info: the exact change in the DNA code, what category of mutation that occurred (insertion, deletion, transpositional, etc.), and the phenotypic alteration that resulted from it. None of those details were provided in this paper, which leads me to believe they were never determined. If they were the authors should have been eager to share their findings. Because analysis of the mutations was not given I cannot gauge whether or not novel structures were created. As explained in round 2 there are mutations that provide benefit but do not create novel structures. Other such examples of this are: the color of moth wings or the size of finch beaks. Both are famous examples from biology textbooks and neither are incidences of novel structures being created. The two body parts at play " beaks and wings " already existed before the mutations happened. What is going on is an alteration of an already existent formation. The example I gave in my opening text concerning eyes would be a new structure being formed. Other examples would include the synthesis of hearing organs or ATP synthase, the potential list is effectively endless. When the authors say novel mutation that means something different. A novel mutation simply means a change in the genome that hasn't occurred before. This may or may not create novel structures. In the end this paper lacks solid evidence for Con's position as the paper does not provide information on the mutations that occurred and thus we do not know whether new structures were created or rather an already existent formation was altered. Even if a novel structure was made and this is what the authors mean by "novel mutation", we cannot see the extent of its explanatory power in regards to the topic of this debate because again there are no details. Con pointed out that the topics of the two other articles they provided address this part of my intro: "supporting mutation as a major force that drove evolution." This is true, they do. However, in my intro the very next sentence reads: "Specifically what I am looking for is a demonstration that mutation is able to create significant novel biological structures that allow for macro evolution to take place." In this regard they don't. I should apologize because my intro was a bit misleading, as it is possible for mutation to have an effect on evolution other than just the creation of purely novel structures. Also I should have stated in the intro that I was looking for single case studies and not review articles. The reason that I strongly prefer single case studies is that within the confines of this debate I do not have enough time to appreciate review articles. The difference between single case studies and review articles is that single case are primary sources, and review are secondary. To gauge a primary source one just has to read and understand the experiment that was carried out. However with secondary sources, to truly interpret their credibility one needs to go through and read the primary sources that the author referenced in order to validate how the review author interpreted/portrayed the primary source findings. Simply put I do not have enough time to read through every case study that are referenced in review articles. That being said I do appreciate Con's participation in this debate and apologize for disregarding two of the articles they took the time to find and present, partially due to my intro not being written as well as it should. With two more rounds to go I again ask that Con provide 2 more case studies.