Invasive species and fodder crops in Africa

This project will study the development histories of fodder crops in Africa and whether this influences invasiveness. Invasive species are a major cause of biodiversity loss and many fodder crops are highly invasive. Histories of fodder crops are less well known compared to food crops. Some are known from archaeology, whilst many maybe modern. This PhD will address 1. Are the fodder species used today ancient or modern domesticates? 2. What is the development history of recent fodder crops?   3. Are modern fodder crops more invasive than ancient fodder crops? This research will examine whether contemporary fodder crops are ancient, historic, or modern using archival records (last 200 yr) and published archaeobotanical datasets. This will also provide perspectives on the extent to which species maybe ‘domesticated’, by comparing examples that span thousands of years to only a few decades of use. Literature sources will refine if colonial era and modern varieties are developed from wild or cultivated forms, and if some are essentially still wild seeds. Seed morphometrics of wild versus cultivated forms will examine evidence for domestication (using seed size increases as a common domestication marker). The lists of ancient, colonial era, and green-revolution fodder crops will be compared against lists of invasive species and plant traits to assess the influence of taxonomic groupings versus use histories on invasiveness.