Marine research at Kiel
Möbius collaborated with Victor Hensen and Heinrich Adolph Meyer on the ecology of Kiel Fjord and Bight. From 1862 they used Meyer’s yacht Marie for research. In 1868 Möbius became professor of zoology at Kiel University and helped develop its zoological museum.
Oyster beds as communities
Investigating oyster beds in Schleswig-Holstein, Möbius treated the organisms living together in a particular habitat as an interacting community, or biocenosis. This shifted attention from an economically useful species in isolation to its relationships with the other inhabitants of the same environment.
Preserving ecological context
Möbius emphasized careful records of collecting localities and collection circumstances. The resulting museum material retained evidence for later comparisons of historical communities and environmental change. Specimens could therefore serve as dated and geographically situated research material as well as examples of individual species.
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