How does mutation cause natural selection? and is it common in protists or prokaryotes?
Your question, as I understand it, concerns the relative role (compare to natural selection and drift probably) of mutation in evolution. But evolution is not one process. Mutation and natural selection are processes that influence populations in very a different manners. At first sight, it seems to me that it does not make sense to weight the important of mutation versus other processes such as selection. But again, in what term would weight these processes?