Useful Predictions?

From Prentice Hall Biology, page 334 (click to enlarge)

What type of toes would you expect to see in tree-dwelling salamanders? The answer is long, grasping toes. The textbook example pictured here, however, states that the toe pattern that enhances tree-dwelling is short and webbed, as opposed to long and grasping. If fossils of these two species were interpreted in this same manner, the conclusion that short toes enhance tree-dwelling would likely be rejected. Evolutionists accept this evidence as support for their idea, despite the fact that evolution would predict the opposite form. What should be interpreted as loss of information by mutation is hailed as evolutionary achievement. No matter what the evidence, the plastic idea of evolution can bend to accommodate it.