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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 April 2016
Star formation along the bar is common in late-type barred galaxies (Phillips and Garcia-Barreto et al., these proceedings), which tend to have weak stellar bars. It is rarer in strongly barred galaxies, e.g., early-type spiral galaxies. Abundance gradient measurements (Martin & Roy 1995) and simulations (Friedli & Benz 1995) suggest that star formation along the bar of strongly barred galaxies may indicate a young bar. Since bars can be created in tidal interactions and mergers (Noguchi 1987), it is of interest to investigate the star formation properties of barred galaxies in different environments. We use Hα images to compare the star formation properties in the bar region of a sample of barred galaxies in the Virgo Cluster and a control sample of isolated galaxies. We focus on the three galaxies with the strongest star formation along the bar, including NGC 4424, a possible merger remnant.