Carnivorous plants attract, capture, digest, absorb, and nourish small animals with specialized leaves, so they can grow on nutrient poor environment where they can outcompete other plants. About 600 species of carnivorous plants are known throughout the world, and many evolutionary biologists, including Charles Darwin, have been fascinated by the mystery of the evolutionary process of carnivorous plants.
 
An international collaborative research team led by researchers at National Institute for Basic Biology in Japan and the University of Wuerzburg in Germany has deciphered the genomes of three carnivorous plants (the spoon-leafed sundew Drosera spatulata, the Venus flytrap Dionaea muscipula, and the waterwheel plant Aldrovanda vesiculosa), belonging to the sundew family.
 The spoon-leafed sundew Drosera spatulata, the Venus flytrap Dionaea muscipula, and the waterwheel plant Aldrovanda vesiculosa