  We present results from a survey of dwarf galaxy candidates in the vicinity
of strongly interacting galaxies. The goal of the survey was a test of the
hypothesis that massive condensations of stars and HI in tidal tails of large
interacting galaxies may be a significant source of independent,
self-gravitating dwarf galaxies. These so called tidal dwarf galaxies (TDG) can
be expected to resemble the blue luminous knots found in tidal tails, but also
might appear as redder, evolved systems if formed much before they are being
observed. For the present study, a homogeneous subsample of 6 fields was
selected from the catalog of extended objects in fields around 15 strongly
interacting galaxies by Deeg et al. (1998). Criteria for the subsample were:
similar redshifts of the central interacting galaxies, and photometric
completeness of the extended objects in V and R. The number density of these
TDG candidates was compared with expected background galaxy densities. Within
the statistical errors, background galaxies account for most, if not all of the
extended objects. There is no evidence for a substantial locally formed dwarf
galaxy population. Thus, we conclude that field galaxy-galaxy interactions are
likely to result in the formation of only a few long-lived TDG.
