Performance of vocal signals, such as birdsong, may be a subject to trade-offs among acoustic traits that limit the signal outcomes. Trilled songs in which syllables are repeated in rapid succession present males with a performance challenge resulting in a trade-off between trill rate (rate of repetition) and frequency bandwidth (range of frequency). Individuals of a species might differ in ability to produce high-performance songs that are close to a performance limit. It was suggested that high-performance songs might honestly reveal a high-quality singer, and both males and females might use those songs to detect high-quality singers. To test further this performance hypothesis, I asked whether the usage of song types depended on their performance in the Pale-legged leaf-warbler (Phylloscopus tenellipes), a species with individual repertoires of up to 11 trilled song types. I analyzed 125 song types (n = 25 males) taken from both spontaneous singing and singing elicited by conspecific playback. Songs showed the same performance trade-off between trill rate and frequency bandwidth as found in other passerines. Individuals did not differ relative to one another in their average vocal performance. Males did not preferentially use either high- or low-performance song types in response to playback-simulated territorial intrusion. They also did not modulate the performance of the same song type to signal aggression. Besides, song performance did not differ between predominant song types and all other song types. Since the predominant song type of a given male usually the only one that used in spontaneous singing, a receiver presumably cannot obtain information about the male’s performance ability from his spontaneous singing. Overall, my results did not confirm the role of vocal performance in male–male interaction.

声音信号的表现，例如鸟鸣，可能是限制信号输出的声学特征之间权衡的主题。音节快速连续重复的颤音歌曲给男性带来了表演挑战，导致颤音率（重复率）和频率带宽（频率范围）之间的权衡。一个物种的个体在制作接近性能极限的高性能歌曲的能力上可能不同。有人提出，高水平的歌曲可能会诚实地揭示一个高品质的歌手，男性和女性都可能通过这些歌曲来识别高品质的歌手。为了进一步检验这一表现假设，我询问了歌曲类型的使用是否取决于它们在淡腿叶莺（Phylloscopus tenellipes）中的表现)，一个拥有多达 11 种颤音歌曲类型的个人曲目的物种。我分析了 125 种歌曲类型（n= 25 名男性）取自自发歌唱和同种回放引发的歌唱。歌曲在颤音率和频率带宽之间表现出与其他雀形目动物相同的性能权衡。个人的平均声乐表现相对于彼此没有差异。男性不会优先使用高性能或低性能歌曲类型来响应回放模拟的领土入侵。他们也没有调整同一歌曲类型的表现来表示攻击性。此外，主要歌曲类型与所有其他歌曲类型之间的歌曲表现没有差异。由于给定男性的主要歌曲类型通常是自发歌唱中唯一使用的歌曲类型，因此接收者可能无法从他的自发歌唱中获得有关男性表演能力的信息。全面的，