Acoustic communication in orthopterans and anurans is a suitable model system to study sexual selection because the acoustic signals are generally produced by males to attract females over long distances for mating. Such systems provide an opportunity to explore the two operative mechanisms of sexual selection, male competition and female mate choice. In studies of sexual selection in these systems, the common approach has been to quantify male acoustic signal variation and to measure female preferences for different features of the acoustic signal using playback experiments, generally under laboratory conditions. A lack of ecologically relevant information on signal variation and female mate sampling strategies in wild populations, however, makes it difficult to assess the strength of selection and distinguish between the two mechanisms of sexual selection. Thus, for my thesis, I first quantified variation in male acoustic signals in a wild population of the field cricket species Plebeiogryllus guttiventris, in terms of amount of calling activity across multiple nights and the acoustic features of the advertisement signal within and across nights. I then went on to study female preferences for individual call features and the possible trade-offs when features co-varied. Finally, I explored female sampling strategies using experimental and computational approaches.