It certainly helps identify first hand, where the mutations are happening. However, some sort of clear/transleucent color would be great for camo; a bot would theoretically see through the camo bot. Also, such an ability should cost a lot of energy, since its a very specialized use in nature (in fact mostly used at the highest form by reptiles and other sea-life). Plus, the ability to manipulate their own color, much like the in/out would give the user the only visual of an out/in system. These colors could become elaborate forms of mating rituals/defensive mechanisms/parental-child notifiers/ and many other abilities are imaginable.
Introducing something like bot controlled color would really be neat. A small mutation in the color genes could be good, or devastating, depending on the amount of energy required to perform a color shift. I also think that the color shifts should be linear, meaning a bot could only change based on a shift of 1 color (or maybe something as small as RGB code digit).
