  The class of generalized shearlet dilation groups has recently been developed
to allow the unified treatment of various shearlet groups and associated
shearlet transforms that had previously been studied on a case-by-case basis.
We consider several aspects of these groups: First, their systematic
construction from associative algebras, secondly, their suitability for the
characterization of wavefront sets, and finally, the question of constructing
embeddings into the symplectic group in a way that intertwines the
quasi-regular representation with the metaplectic one. For all questions, it is
possible to treat the full class of generalized shearlet groups in a
comprehensive and unified way, thus generalizing known results to an infinity
of new cases. Our presentation emphasizes the interplay between the algebraic
structure underlying the construction of the shearlet dilation groups, the
geometric properties of the dual action, and the analytic properties of the
associated shearlet transforms.
