the process of natural selection
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Every individual member of a species varies a little bit from every other member. It might be the length of a bird’s beak, the length a grashopper’s leg, the colour of a marmot’s fur, etc.
If any of these animals lives long enough to reproduce, then their offspring will share at least some of these characteristics.
Given the organism’s habitat, if a variation makes it far more likely for that individual to reproduce, then it is more likely that this trait will carry on. Likewise, if a trait inpede’s an individual’s ability to reproduce, then it is likely that this trait will end with that individual.
A great example might be bird beaks. Beaks of a certain species of bird might come in various lengths. If the habitat includes a food source such as seeds held in a pod that only longer beaked birds can reach, then these birds now have an extra food source that short beaked birds do not. This alone might not cause long beaked birds to prevail over short beaked birds.
But if some calamity were to wipe out most food sources except for this particular kind of seed pod, then most of the short beaked birds will starve out and eventually stop reproducing. Since the long beaked birds can still find food, they can reproduce in sufficient numbers to sustain a populatuon of long beaked birds, while their short beaked cousins to go extinct.
Over hundreds of thousands of years, the net result is the apparently specialized biodiversity we observe today.
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