The Local Environment of HII Galaxies

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We address the question of whether violent star formation in HII galaxies is induced by low mass companions by describing statistically their local environment as estimated by the correlation function. We argue that even if low mass companions were mainly intergalactic HI clouds, their optical counterparts should be detectable at faint limits of the Automatic Plate Measuring Machine scans. We then cross-correlate a large sample of HII galaxies with the APM faint field galaxy catalogue. The preliminary results are all consistent with HII galaxies being a randomly selected sample of normal faint field galaxy with no extra clustering. This suggests that at least in these dwarf starburst galaxies star formation is not triggered by tidal interactions and may have a different origin.