Understanding the Question:
Biological evolution is the gradual, heritable change in the characteristics of populations of organisms over successive generations.
Detailed Explanation:
It happens because individuals in a population show variation, and some variations help an organism survive and reproduce better in its environment than others.
Natural selection favours individuals carrying these useful variations, so their genes become more common in the next generation, which slowly shifts the traits of the whole population.
Over long spans of time, this accumulation of small changes can produce new species, explaining the diversity of life we see today, from bacteria to complex animals and plants sharing a common ancestry.
Final Answer:
Biological evolution is the slow, natural-selection driven change in populations across generations that has produced the entire diversity of life from shared common ancestors.